“I was a film major because, for some reason, I thought that that was a creative job that had more job opportunities. I don’t know what logic I was following, but that was my impression at the time.”

On one hand, I think it’s very important to talk about race and talk about gender, because if it’s not talked about, then we won’t progress.

You always want what you can’t have, and that all-American thing, from the day I was born,

I can’t read in a car, because I’ll get sick. It’s almost instant.

Oftentimes, the most important decisions I make are the ones I don’t put much thought into.

If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me.

I lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.

I don’t set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it’s about.

I think what’s hard for me is not that I don’t get downtime to chill, it’s that I don’t get time to make music.

As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.

You can be heartbroken about a relationship but also, from it, realize you are you, and you’re okay with who you are or where you came from.

When someone is a musician – trying to make a living off being a public figure – it’s really easy for people to see me as a face on a screen that doesn’t have a personal life.

Often I’ve had problems automatically bending to a lover’s will, becoming what I know they want me to be. Immediately, I learn all the music they love, listen to it, study it, instead of being like, ‘This is what I love!’

I try to be regimented and try to stay healthy and work out and eat properly and go to sleep. And not get too caught up in the industry in my regular life, so I can save all my expression and energy for my art.

I don’t care about making anything new. I make music to express an emotion, and if the emotion is nostalgic, so be it.

I think people don’t realize how little of being an artist is making art.

I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn’t last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn’t have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.

Europe is not one of the major powers. And Africa even less so of course. But Africa has what Europe lacks: space, human resources, and natural resources

When the great Composer shall transpose all the strains of earth from the minor into the major, when the wail of nature shall give way to the glad harmony of the everlasting jubilee.

Inculcating the various competing – competing, note – falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.

Major sports are major parts of society. It’s not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society.

I can’t point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother’s ability and energy.

Never break or fold, that’s what it takes to be major.

Guaranteeing health care as a right isn’t radical. It’s what every other major country already does.

Most people fail in life because they major in minor things.