Brandi Carlile Quotes

My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury.

Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes. But the less vulnerable we are because of privilege, the country we're born in, or the security we enjoy, the more vulnerable our souls are to apathy.

You know, your first album is about really amazing things. Your first album is always about coming of age, first love, first loss, usually you suffer a first loss of someone that you love to death, even, you know, really big life lessons, things you learn from your parents' divorce or from the travels that you took.

But I'm warning you, we're growing up.

You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you're standing in the eye.

All of these lines across my face, tell you the story of who I am. So many stories of where I've been and how I got to where I am.

When I was younger, I was always running into other girls involved in music. When I was about 14 or 15, one of my friend's dads was an Elvis impersonator and asked us to sing backups at a rehearsal. I did well and was hired. Did that for about two years.

Colorado is an oasis, an otherworldly mountain place. I've played so many shows in Colorado that I think I'm the Colorado house band.

The purpose of it all is love.

The oppression of women is the single most corrosive and urgent problem of our time.

In life, I'm most inspired by entertaining people and driven by the desire to do it by such a powerful force that I think it influences everything I do.

Coffee, whiskey, and fishing poles. That’s really all you need in life.

My mother's a singer and my mother's father is a singer, and everyone on both sides are all country-western bluegrass musicians.

The mole can't live in your dollhouse.

Writing is sort of putting a puzzle together halfway. Then, performing it has always been the completion of it. Once that happens, I'm feeling verbally communal with other people. It's out there and I feel so much better about it.

There are still civil rights issues. There are still people who can't be visited by their spouse in the hospital because they're gay. These are humanitarian issues. At the end of the day, all you want is for people to be happy in the pursuit of life, love and liberty.

Wherever is your heart I call home.

People sing each other's songs and they cultivate standards. That's the reason why we have folk music and folk stories. History is told through song.

I used to turn to nature and animals a lot. And fishing. I spend time still with my Bible and the gospel music, and I still have to feed the animals! But my wife and daughter have brought me a world of perspective when I'm feeling just a little "extra important."

I stand firm behind the belief that, for me, songwriting isn't something that I do or command, it happens to me. I can either choose to stop and acknowledge it, or put it off and hope that it won't fade away. 'That Wasn't Me' is no exception - it came together more quickly than any other song I have ever constructed on my own.

There's a lot of really inspiring music coming around the bend - we tend to believe that to sound classic or timeless is to sound vintage or retro. It's a little bit dangerous, because you'll really miss a chance to make your mark as a generation.

I've read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you're singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.

Even before I had a daughter, I was passionate about global women's issues, but now that she's here, I'm even more inspired to leave a better world for Evangeline.

I tend to feel really protective of songs, and if they aren't sitting well in a record, I'll pull them tight to my chest until I feel it's a better time.

So much of the way a singer physically damages their voice could be caused by stress or nerves. I would never be so brazen as to assume that it's the only problem but there's got to be a reason that a martial artist can harness enough peace to smash his head through a cinder block without leaving a scratch.

If I learned to play guitar it was so that I would have something to sing to, if I learned to write a song it was so that I would have something to sing. So the gut feeling you're talking about comes from singing and communicating the lyrics and what it is that we feel.

People that could yodel always fascinated me. People that could sing loud always fascinated me. So I started trying to mimic at a really young age: 6, 7 years old.

The first thing I think of when I think about coming to Las Vegas and playing is always Elvis; its always the first thing on my mind.

I feel like the kindest thing that I do to my voice is sing.

I have vocal trouble from time to time associated with sleep or wine! Or from sleeping in a bunk the size of a coffin and breathing in bus air conditioning all day.

I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.

But now, with the last two years of touring and being on the road, I've learned that a live show should never sound like a record; a record should sound like a live show.

I love fishing, any kind of fishing.

Sometimes seeming happy can be self-destructive even when you're sane.

You can't change people, but most importantly, unless you're their momma, you don't even know what's best for them.

Singing is a form of meditation... apparently the only one that I have command over.

I'd love to claim the title of 'songwriter' or 'intellectual,' but the truth is that anything that I ever learned how to do in conjunction with music was purely so that I would have a platform to sing from.

It's impossible to just come up with one thing that I could say to the world. That's why I've spent my life in the pursuit of the opportunity to sing to it. Summing it up goes against what fuels me.

I was born when I met you, now I'm dying to forget you

Every city has a town outside with a lake. I pull out my fishing pole and fish. I've been doing that for a long time.

I didn't get bullied any more than anybody else. I think I got bullied more for being poor than being gay. But no more than any other kid. And I'm sure that I did my fair share of picking on other kids, too. We're all humans.

Cousins are forever and forever are cousins they stand by your side for you no matter what.

I hope that somewhere in Small Town, U.S.A., a 15-year-old kid looks to me as a role model the way I looked at the Indigo Girls and Elton John as role models.

I feel like a lot of the singer-songwriters in my genre and in my generation have gotten more and more snooty about covering other people's songs. They believe that creativity is the intersect of expression.

Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes.

I'm not so arrogant to consider mine the only legitimate art form. I can't in one breath make a fuss about someone compartmentalizing music into genre and then in the next accuse advertising and short film of not being art.

There is a creator and a redeemer, and the purpose of it all is love.

Bear the burdens of others, but don't put them in your pocket too.

I believe that writing for me is in a way like wisdom; in that as soon as you feel like you've got it figured out you stop growing and maybe even lose something.

I'm not sure I'll ever be famous by anyone's definition. I can only hope to be allowed by the audience to continue my life's work.