Top 50 Tracy Chapman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’ve seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives.”

— Tracy Chapman

2. “There’s a power in words. There’s a power in being able to explain and describe and articulate what you know and feel and believe about the world, and about yourself.”

— Tracy Chapman

3. “Words don’t come easily, like forgive me.”

— Tracy Chapman

4. “We are the spirit, the collective conscience. We create the pain, and suffering, and beauty in this world.”

— Tracy Chapman

5. “I think it’s important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.”

— Tracy Chapman

6. “I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right.”

— Tracy Chapman

7. “At this point in my life Id like to live as if only love mattered.”

— Tracy Chapman

8. “Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It’s something I don’t feel like I really control.”

— Tracy Chapman

9. “You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you. I’ve been trying to do that. It’s really made a major difference for me. I’m a happier person.”

— Tracy Chapman

10. “This youthful heart can love you and give you what you need, but I’m too old to go chasing you around wasting my precious energy.”

— Tracy Chapman

11. “I don’t want someone to squeeze me, that might take away my life. Just want someone to hold me, and we’ll rock through the night.”

— Tracy Chapman

12. “Have faith in humankind a respect for what is earthly and an unfaltering belief in peace and understanding.”

— Tracy Chapman

13. “I meet people in my daily life, people who seem to experience some change and some growth on a personal level, and that gives me hope.”

— Tracy Chapman

14. “With other people, you’re always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you’ve never heard. It’s a great way to hear all sorts of new things.”

— Tracy Chapman

15. “I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them.”

— Tracy Chapman

16. “Who took away the part so essential to the whole Left you a hollow body Skin and bone.”

— Tracy Chapman

17. “My old man’s got a problem, he lives with the bottle.”

— Tracy Chapman

18. “We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.”

— Tracy Chapman

19. “People’s real hopes and dreams can be distorted and misdirected and packaged until you’re not sure what you really want or what you even really need.”

— Tracy Chapman

20. “I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!”

— Tracy Chapman

21. “Now love’s the only thing thats free. We must take it where it’s found. Pretty soon it may be costly.”

— Tracy Chapman

22. “A lot of kids spent more time out of school than in, but I always loved school and thought it was my way out of Cleveland, and out of poverty.”

— Tracy Chapman

23. “Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.”

— Tracy Chapman

24. “I love living in California and being able to go to the beach or go to the woods.”

— Tracy Chapman

25. “Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don’t usually approach a record as a concept. There’s no overriding theme I’m trying to represent. It’s all about the individual songs.”

— Tracy Chapman

26. “Consume more than you need This is the dream Make you pauper Or make you queen I won’t die lonely I’ll have it all prearranged A grave that’s deep and wide enough For me and all my mountains o’things.”

— Tracy Chapman

27. “I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they’d shoot me.”

— Tracy Chapman

28. “Renounce all those material things that you gained by exploiting other human beings.”

— Tracy Chapman

29. “I’m not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.”

— Tracy Chapman

30. “When you feel like you’ve had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it.”

— Tracy Chapman

31. “I’m still thinking and hoping there’s an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.”

— Tracy Chapman

32. “I really love playing music with other people. It’s more fun to be on the road with others. It’s kind of lonely out there when you play on your own!”

— Tracy Chapman

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33. “I don’t try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am.”

— Tracy Chapman

34. “As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me – also because I read a lot.”

— Tracy Chapman

35. “Some folks call her a runaway. A failure in the race. But she knows where her ticket takes her. She will find her place in the sun.”

— Tracy Chapman

36. “I think many people would say that writers like Stephen King have hypergraphia.”

— Tracy Chapman

37. “As a child I spent a lot of time at the library.”

— Tracy Chapman

38. “After it’s finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.”

— Tracy Chapman

39. “My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.”

— Tracy Chapman

40. “The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I’ve felt, or something somebody’s told me. It all comes together.”

— Tracy Chapman

41. “I got a plan to get out of here, I’ve been working at a convenient store.”

— Tracy Chapman

42. “I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.”

— Tracy Chapman

43. “Love’s a recurring theme through my work.”

— Tracy Chapman

44. “Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.”

— Tracy Chapman

45. “I never assumed I would have that commercial success, so it was a total surprise. And honestly, I never assumed that it would ever happen again.”

— Tracy Chapman

46. “I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it’s finished.”

— Tracy Chapman

47. “I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.”

— Tracy Chapman

48. “I’m not sure if the next song I write is going to be about love or a song about a tree.”

— Tracy Chapman

49. “I’m never sure if I’ll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it.”

— Tracy Chapman

50. “We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It’s supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.”

— Tracy Chapman