“I have to speak for myself. As far as videos go – casting, the artwork, everything – I’m completely hands-on. You have to be if you want your points across.”

Big productions, to me, are great – like, I love going to Vegas and seeing shows – but I think that sometimes it’s distracting, especially when you are there to listen to the music.

My mom has always wished me a daughter just like me.

This life gets lonely when everybody wants something.

For so long, I was searching for something to be proud of. But at a certain point, I realized, ‘Wait, I’m doing what I want to be doing. I’m not wanting to do it; I’m doing it.’ And that’s awesome.

Change the voices in your head. Make them like you instead.

My fans mean more to me than they will ever know. I call these people my friends and my confidence and if they are here to see me and they are here to support me, then that’s all I need in life.

You can’t be creative when you’re completely happy.

Gotta get up and try.

I don’t think imitation is the highest form of flattery, I think it’s annoying.

Sage is cleansing and sacred.

When I first appeared, people couldn’t figure out whether I was gay, straight, black, white or whatever, and I loved that. I loved the fact it scares people.

I’ve learned I’m not lying by not saying anything, so I just don’t say it anymore.

Raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways.

I change my mind so much I need two boyfriends and a girlfriend.

I’ve always felt like the underdog, and I’m comfortable with that label.

You can’t move mountains by whispering at them.

I’m not good at future planning. I don’t plan at all. I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I don’t have a day planner and I don’t have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future.

Democracy is in the blood of Musalmans, who look upon complete equality of manhood [mankind] and believe in fraternity, equality and liberty.

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

I don’t really feel the loyalty to any particular genre. To be completely honest, I’m an R&B singer because I’m black and I sing.

The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.

Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed.

The moment I began to understand what was going on with the treatment of animals, it led me more and more in the way of the path I am [on] now, which is a complete vegan.

I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into God’s infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor deny.