“I wanted to try to be a real live person, rather than just singing songs about them.”
As quoted in "The Rumpus Interview with Thao Nguyen" in The Rumpus (5 August 2013) https://therumpus.net/2013/08/the-rumpus-interview-with-thao-nguyen/
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Thao Nguyen 3
American singer-songwriter 1984Related quotes

Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/84-jul30.htm with Bert Kleinman (30 July 1984). Cf. C. S. Lewis: "People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself."

“The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”
Source: Tropic of Cancer

During a concert for the "Animals" tour in Montreal, Quebec, 1977 [can be heard on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b2J9Qevo1E]
Miscellaneous

Song lyrics, The Essential Bob Dylan (2000), Maggie's Farm
Variant: Well I tried my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them

“My dame, sing for this person accurate songs.”
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract

In the self-interview on Stop Making Sense

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”
Source: The Color Purple