Boots Riley (Raymond Lawrence Riley) Quotes
I wanted to write a song about sexism, but I didn't want to do it in a mechanical way and be like, "Don't be sexist!" because that's not how I talk in regular life.
Quotes to Explore
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I wanted to make Canadian films, and I ended up making American films.
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When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces.
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When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away. It's them writing a simple message and them knowing that people are going to see it.
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On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.
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I became what I wanted to be.
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Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.
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I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.
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Music can be such a vulnerable thing, so when you're delivering a vocal or writing a piece of music, it's easy to get sideways.
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If you start off writing an album with a band, the reality is that you're constantly in each other's company, so it's really important that you get on with each other.
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People shout out for songs and I don't even remember writing them.
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And I love writing. I've always loved writing.
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I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.
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I have been taking voice and singing lessons since age 10 and originally got into it because I was really interested in musical theater. After writing my first couple of songs and performing at age 14, I knew that I really wanted to be a singer.
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I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.
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I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.
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My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other.
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Writing works when publications are writing and serving the best interest of their users; numbers are good yardstick but not a way to compensate a person.
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I write the occasional entry for the 'Times' Theatre blog, especially when I'm in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly.
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I'm really annoyed by the wave of country music that's just a list of stuff. It almost sounds like L.A. people writing country music, because it's just a list of stuff: 'My pickup truck and my cowboy boots and my Levi's jeans and my girlfriend with the short shorts.' It's so boring!
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I guess there was a little bit of a slight rebellion, maybe a little bit of a renegade desire that made me realize at some point in my adolescence that I really liked pictures that told stories of things - genre paintings, historical paintings - the sort of derivatives we get in contemporary society.
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As a little boy, my first job was delivering newspapers, and then I had a variety of different jobs. I worked in a butcher shop. I worked in a supermarket. I worked in construction. I dug ditches on the Long Island Expressway in 1954, 1955, 1956.
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But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.
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I wanted to write a song about sexism, but I didn't want to do it in a mechanical way and be like, "Don't be sexist!" because that's not how I talk in regular life.
