Tortured Quotations

I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist. It comes out of that Symbolist idea, back to Rimbaud and all that disordering of the senses and all of that being some exalted state. When I've been that way, I've always been less exalted than I would have liked.

The play is done, the crowds depart; and see / That twisted tortured thing hung from a tree, / Swart victim of a newer Calvary.

The president was tortured severely by the American forces and I saw bruise marks on his body. They are visible. They are still torturing him psychologically.

The song is Texas having a fresh look at that Giorgio Moroder vibe of uplifting electronic pop but with sexy slow vocals. I wanted to combine modern sounds with a real Billie Holliday kind of feel. When I was growing up my dad would be away at sea and my Mum, my sister and I would be at home blasting disco and Abba alongside her old Billie Holliday albums. I knew the spirit I wanted. I knew I could emulate that Billie Holliday sensibility - not the framed icon with the beautiful flower in her hair, but the slightly dark woman on the edge, this tortured brave singer who struggled around this merciless music circuit. It's a bit of a homage from my heart.

I am confounded by the tortured tale of these negotiations. It is unfortunate that it had to come down to an illegal strike.

Even though I have not loved from the beginning this wonderful soul, even though I have long disappointed and tortured it with my apparent instability, I have come to understand that when you do not seek you will find and when you do not love from the beginning you will live the greatest love, that will become the love of your life.

Kidnapping an innocent man and sending him to a secret location to be tortured is not only illegal, it is immoral. We need a full and complete investigation of a policy that has allowed countless detainees, some of them entirely innocent, to be tortured in our names.

In El Salvador, when neighbors were disappeared, tortured or killed, people doubted their own knowledge of the victims, and worried there must have been some secret guilt involved to deserve such punishment! That's how political terror succeeds.

We have always said that men in police and Interior Ministry commando uniforms use Interior Ministry vehicles, raid our houses and arrest our sons. After a short time, we find some of them tortured or killed and thrown either on a sidewalk or in the river. We have warned all the officials and the American forces, but they did not respond to our calls until the American forces found this group.

I used to be on the kitchen floor, crying, wasted and thinking of lyrics. That was the only way I could create - as a tortured artist. I've learned that you can be stable and taking care of yourself and still create beautiful work.