One of the reasons I chose Tufts is that they have one of the best veterinary schools in the country. Since I was six years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian.
— Tracy Chapman
I could make records at home in a vacuum, but that is not the situation. I'm just taking it one phase at a time.
That's one of the things I like about San Francisco. It's not like anywhere else in the world.
There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting.
My first record was almost not my first record.
We do need to think about how we have security - everyone has a right to that - but we also need to think about how we maintain civil rights and personal freedom.
It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting.
When we started making 'Where You Live', I bought a bunch of Polaroid cameras in so that people could record the experience. Some of those pictures are in the CD sleeve.
I grew up with music in the house. I was told I could sing as soon as I started talking. Everybody in my family sang, always lots of records, blues and jazz and soul, R&B, you know, like Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Coltrane, that kind of thing.
It's fun playing small venues.
I think many people would say that writers like Stephen King have hypergraphia.
I love living in California and being able to go to the beach or go to the woods.
Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?'
I meet people in my daily life, people who seem to experience some change and some growth on a personal level, and that gives me hope.
I think of the audience the way I would think of another person: You meet someone, then you take it from there; you see what's interesting to both of you.
I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.
I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.
I always considered trying to make a living playing music. But it was always really clear to me, at the various stages in my life, that it really wasn't a possibility unless some phenomenal thing happened.
There's a time and place for everything, and my focus is music. So that's what I prefer to spend most of my time doing, and not talk about making music.
You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That's the way I like to move through the world; I don't need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do.
As I started to consider a career in music, I hoped for success, truthfully. I didn't imagine anything that would amass the level of the first record, but I hoped that I would be able to sustain a career.
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.
That's what everyone should do with their lives: stand up for what they believe in or try to do some good in the world. I don't think artists have a greater responsibility than anyone else.
I mentioned that I received a scholarship to Episcopalian school, and the model for the school was 'From each according to his or her ability and to each according to his or her need.' And it's something that is still really important to me in thinking about how I prioritize what I do with my life.
Honestly, I think, as an artist, it's everything that's in your life that informs what you do. So, obviously, growing up in Cleveland has played a big role in how I see the world.
I think religion played a huge part in Bush's re-election.
A lot of kids spent more time out of school than in, but I always loved school and thought it was my way out of Cleveland, and out of poverty.
As a child, I spent a lot of time at the library.
As you might imagine, I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests, and I basically try to do what I can.
What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak.
So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.
I don't try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am.
As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot.
The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.
I won't get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write.
I decided to do whatever I could to make sure the business side of music didn't intrude on the creative part.
Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.
There have been some gains made in terms of more equality for women in the workplace and in the way the legal system deals with issues of violence against women.
I never travelled when I was younger.
I had a ukulele when I was much younger. I have no idea what happened to it but I think that was part of it, just being inspired and wanting to try to play an instrument that, to me, sounded beautiful.
I was raised in a Baptist tradition, but then I went to an Episcopalian high school, and they were very accepting of people of all faiths.
I started playing and writing songs when I was eight.
I don't know - I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.
I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.
If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you're willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it's mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that's what matters.
There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.
Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.
I never assumed I would have that commercial success, so it was a total surprise. And honestly, I never assumed that it would ever happen again.
I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me.
Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it.
