Melody Gardot
One of my favourite cities is Toulouse, which is famous for its violets.Collection: Famous
The people that are inspirational to me are those who are truly struggling.Collection: Inspirational
One cannot advance as a compassionate human being by continuing to do the same thing, living the same way.
There's something that human beings understand inherently about simplicity in design.
Louis Armstrong was about playing with soul and emotion, not about showing how technically brilliant he was.
I think there's something nice about a distilled sound.
I wouldn't know absolutely everything I've been influenced by, but the first jazz I heard was Duke Ellington.
We all speak the same language, but when someone can speak eloquently or with poise, it's striking. I like that.
With someone like Charlie Mingus, there is a counterweight between melody and raucousness. He is still very melodic even though is tearing apart the seam-work of sound.
With someone like Cole Porter, Perry Como, Louis Armstrong, or Bessie Smith, you had people who understood emotion, could translate it into a melodic sensibility, and could express it in a way that unified humanity.
Fear is a useless emotion. It prevents everything from happening. It's like closing every door and every window to your opportunity for surpassing anything in existence.
I don't live in fear.
I know my mom worked three jobs to pay $300-a-month rent. I know we shared cans of food for dinner - one can, for a grown woman and a little girl.
I don't drive so well. So instead of collecting cars, you could say I collect shoes.
I went to the school of hard knocks. I don't mess around.
My mother dropped a dish on the floor one day and the sound made me collapse.
Sometimes you have to be broken down to your core to get back to your essence. You have accumulated a crust from the world, and it needs to be destroyed.
When you're 19 and 20, you're running around at a million miles an hour, and the world can't even catch up. But when you have to stop and walk the way you would when you're much older, it's like riding in a car through a city. You can see better and see more.
I find that most of the people I work with had illnesses as children or were extraordinarily shy.
Most artists I know have gone through some period that forces them to get to the very core of who they are.
Music is everything.
I value life in the same way as most people do in their twilight years.
I listen to anything that has groove and soul but most of the music that I like is by people who are dead or dying.
I had short-term memory at zero, so you don't have this problem of worry or anxiety, because you don't remember what you're supposed to be worried about.
That's my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.
I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy.
If you listen to a song like 'Sodade' from Caesaria Evoria, eventually you can sing the words just like she does.
In Lisbon, you encounter fado, which has been spoon-fed to the tourists almost like the tango in Argentina. But the real sounds are harder to find - you have to go to places where you wouldn't be told to go, like up north.
Hey, the world is my home! And it's not scary - it's beautiful, liberating and enchanting, and you live moments out of a storybook because there's nothing to hold you back.
I had severe anomia. I couldn't formulate words at all.
My mom always sang to me.
If someone wants to hear me, they can listen.
I was in physical rehab for a year.
The greatest wines have the best stories. When you get a bottle of wine you like, you read the label.
I forget everything. I forget what time I'm supposed to do things. I forget lovers.
People can't accept when you change sometimes.
Music is the universal language; it is the soundtrack to our existence.
If anyone can learn anything, they can learn how to appreciate silence and stop every now and then.
I didn't ask to be a musician, but I see the responsibility of it and I am grateful for it.
In America we live to work: we work like crazy and I know people like to celebrate but they don't get the opportunities.
Music is one of the only things that helps to reconnect neural pathways in our brain: listening, performing, singing, making a verbal attempt to sing along or hum.
I'm a big fan of motionless sound. I love when you're listening to a song and you can hear the harmonies, not because they are there but because they are there in your head.
I love cafe culture, art and intellect, the long hello and sweet goodbye.
I've fallen in love with South American music: Tango, the music of Argentina, the music of Brazil, Stan Getz, Bebel Gilberto.
I'm a bad walker but I can dance tango.
The journey from the bedroom to the stage has been a long on.
To be honest with you, being on stage and performing is the 30, 40, 50 minutes of the most pleasurable experience that I have. Because it's during that time that I don't really feel any pain.
History is a part of everyone's life. I highly doubt Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder woke up every day remembering first they were blind. Life is what it is.
My requirements and my desires are relatively small - things like having a bed, a shower... A bathtub is usually high on the list - I love bubble baths.
I feel like I'm ancient, like two thousand years old.