Mavis Staples Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Well, we like to let down our hair and pep it up at the dances, but we keep it slower when we broadcast. We have to please everybody, and that softer music appeals to the larger amount of people. It's like eating too much cake. You have to have your steak too.
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Each time I seem to go through one of life's huge things, I want to play music.
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I act because it's the one time I'm sure of my identity. There's no doubt. It's on paper.
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Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.
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My body will never go back to what it was, and I wouldn't expect it to after three babies.
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I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn't exist without the performance-art element.
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It's my job to make sure that the people I'm gonna team up with for my music see everything that I'm about: Put all my cards on the table and don't make them guess.
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Gospel music always relaxes me and calms my nerves.
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Most experiences are either sensual or intellectual. Chamber music, played by a small group so the listener can follow what each player is doing, is both.
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If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.
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My music has a high irritation factor. I've always tried to say something. Eccentric lyrics about eccentric people. Often it was a joke. But I would plead guilty on the grounds that I prefer eccentricity to the bland.
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Truly, love is delightful and pleasant food, supplying, as it does, rest to the weary, strength to the weak, and joy to the sorrowful. It in fact renders the yoke of truth easy and its burden light.
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It's a crazy world, so sports and athletics and music can be a form of escapism.
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Happily, financial capitalism and free trade have not done away with national languages and literatures, as Marx rather too blithely hoped.
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I'm not very much of a foodie; I like small amounts of delicious things, but I've never overeaten - I'd much rather have a glass of wine.
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I wanted to play rocking country music, and when I started out in the late Seventies, it took me a couple of albums to figure out how to do that.
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They kept me in short pants as long as they could, until they were shaving the hair on my legs because it was beginning to photograph.
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I've moved around so much my whole life, and I've gotten so used to being the Other in situations - the foreigner, the outsider. The first time I've ever felt like there was no separation between me and the other elements was in music.
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The way I see it, I can either cross the street, or I can keep waiting for another few years of green lights to go by.
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I was raised with the idea of maximum effort: as long as you could look in the mirror and say, 'I gave it everything I had,' it was OK. But if you gave it less, that would disgrace you.
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Music is such a joy, just an absolute joy.
