I don't want to force my vibe on anyone, but you've got to learn to love yourself, as opposed to being in love with yourself.
Terence Trent D'Arby
The experiences and feelings I have are starting to outweigh the words available to explain them.
I have a gut instinctive feeling that I will be as massive as Madonna, as massive as Michael Jackson... Whitney Houston, sure.
I have to follow my own vision.
I know that some people view me as a bit manufactured. But I can't be Whitney Houston: somebody who is polite and perfect and appeals to your mother and your grandfather.
Everything that, by the grace of the universe, I was able to become is the direct result of everything I went through.
Everybody wants to go to heaven but very few people are willing to die.
I just happened to be in Paris during one of the fashion weeks and was out one night at a table with a few supermodels. I was sitting next to Michael Hutchence of INXS and at one point I turned to him and said, 'I feel like the meat in a supermodel sandwich.'
The fact that you can even make a record and leave a document that you were here, that's nothing to sneeze at.
I've been privy to certain experiences which have allowed me to realize how fleeting time is, in any case, and how ultimately not important this is. 'This' being the things perhaps we trip on in life.
In some very real way, rock 'n' roll is like a religion to me.
I don't want to be just the latest curiosity.
I came around at a time when myself, Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna and George Michael, we were considered kind of dangerous.
We can tend to be too ambitious when we're young, and a little blind.
I don't do many interviews.
The system is very well regulated in L.A. It's designed to disconnect you from whatever your idea of yourself is. If you're among devils and they realise you're not a devil like they are, there's gonna be some great discomfort.
My 12 years in Los Angeles were hell! But I was sent to study hell and to learn as much from it as I could because there is no other place like hell for a full and complete education.
I don't have to worry about what the average record company person thinks because I am the record company person.
One thing about Italians is you can't let them in your head. They're inquisitive. The English and Germans are a dog tribe; the Italians are cats. They're very helpful, but it's in their own rhythm, their own way, and it can drive you crazy.
All artists are socialists until they see another artist with a bigger house than theirs.
I can only say this with all relative humility: I saw myself as a Beatle.
Terence Trent D'Arby was dead. He watched his suffering as he died a noble death. After intense pain I meditated for a new spirit, a new will, a new identity.
I was aware of all the artists who make good debut records over the years, but no one hears them - and I wanted to make sure that didn't happen in my case.
As I meet more people who were my heroes, I see there is something about them that rings true with all I've ever read and heard about them, and that's all that really matters.
I think some people enjoy that I say things that upset or shake up people.
I don't think there is anyone I've ever met who has been more passionate about music than me, but rock 'n' roll has never been about just music. It is music, attitude, personality, persona, myth, legend.
You have to hit people over the head to make them notice, and I did it.
I change a lot. It's not easy to size me up. There are a lot of conflicts inside.
I do have some very strange thoughts... Still, all geniuses are mad aren't they?
Children are born with pureness, and gradually become distracted with all the little pressures going on.
I learned that I can't be as indulgent as I'd like to be when I record.
In the first place, I was never a very outgoing, public person. That was a facade.
I believe every major strength we have can be used against us as a weakness. At the same time, things that people see as weakness can be part of our strength.
I think it is safe to say, as a huge fan of music, that between 1967 and 1972 was the renaissance of rock music. That's when all the forces combined together-the talent that was available and the freedom for the artists. The industry hadn't become so gigantic.
Everyone has a cross to bear. Sometimes I have to take the splinters out of my shoulders.
I'm a genius.
At the time of 'Neither Fish Nor Flesh's non-performance in the marketplace - I believe that's the expression - every single thing hit me at once. Legal situations, financial situations, the mother of my daughter and I were splitting up, everything.
Real talent is mixing realism with bluff. Every great artist I really respect has a certain amount of bluff; sooner or later you have to be a conjurer, and conjure images.
If you state the obvious long enough, other people will pick up on what you're talking about and examine it. And usually they'll swallow it.
I am a holographic representation in the third dimension of what was requested by your souls that one of your favourite artists be.
Terence Trent D'Arby is the vehicle through which Sananda will let his light shine. I don't know what Sananda means and I have not allowed myself to find out.
A lot of people wanted 'The Hardline, Part II,' and there was no way I was going to do that.
You can't expect a poodle to guard your house the way a Doberman pinscher does, and you can't expect a Doberman pinscher to jump in your lap the way a poodle does. Some people are just animals of a certain nature, and they are always going to have certain impulses that motivate them.
It wasn't necessarily my choice to disappear.
So for my own survival and my growth, as a soul, as an artist and as an emotional being, it was best that I assume an identity I didn't have to fight anyone over or that I have to constantly engage in constant tug of wars and just reinvent myself.
I seem to have been possessed by a mind of my own and I did not merely want to be a pop product, but I wanted to be an artist which was always my ambition.
I've always been blessed, or cursed, with perception.
Looks are like honey: They'll attract flies, bees, bears, but they won't necessarily keep them.
My album is better than 'Sgt. Pepper.'
I obviously wouldn't say on nationwide TV that I thought America was racist, sexist, homophobic and violent if they asked me why I left. I would just say America wasn't a culture I felt comfortable in. But anybody with a brain would understand what I'm trying to say.
