“The first couple of times I went out and heard my voice or heard people listening when I wasn’t the one playing it for them, it felt good.”

As cliche as it sounds, don’t stop. I feel like so often people will have talent or have potential, and they’ll quit because they don’t get anywhere as soon as they want to.

I think if you’re an interesting person, you don’t have to cloud yourself in mystery for people to want to know more about you.

If you’re my woman, you’re somebody I give emotions to that I don’t give to nobody else. You’re my safe space. I don’t want my safe space to be compromised.

I probably talk to myself more than I talk to anyone.

If I’m being honest, I was messing up on every other level in my life growing up – whether it was in school or in my jobs. I was always distracted by my love for music.

I think it was ‘The Diary of Alicia Keys’. That was the first time album I ever bought with my own money. I had a little Discman.

In 2018, nothing is sacred. Everyone is everywhere and knows everybody. I don’t text too personal because somebody might screenshot it and share it.

I want to put my soul into the music and still be who I am when it comes to an actual conversation.

If I have a collection of songs for an EP or mixtape, I create the narrative afterwards; but usually with an album, I have a concept and the name first.

I got a dog and am trying to elevate. I’m working out, eating healthier, reading books. Making ‘Make it Out Alive’ is going to be a reflection of all of that.

I’d prefer for people to know that they’re going to get some substance when they listen to my music versus hearing the same ‘Oooh baby, I love you.’

People will listen to a song and expect that you just have that persona on all the time. But really, that was your one outlet that one day to get that emotion out. The only difference was you put it on a canvas that’s going to be there forever.

I recorded everywhere. I would go to different cities and do a session there for the project. I did sessions in New York and I did sessions in L.A. It was just kind of wherever I was and I felt like cutting a track.

Rapping was kind of hard. It’s so many words. When you sing you can kind of stretch the words out. I didn’t have to write as much as everybody else.

My music is often written from the perspective of an extroverted introvert.

If it feels good coming out, then I really don’t care about anything else, for real. It’s all about just having fun with it. If it feels like less work, then the project is coming out better.

A movie doesn’t have to do everything. A movie just has to do a couple of things. If it does those things well and gives you a cool night at the movies, an emotion, that’s good enough.

If I make him my home, will I lose the home inside myself?

If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.

I continue coupling a plate of silver with one of zinc, and always in the same order, and place between each of these couples a moistened disk. I continue to form a column. If the column contains about twenty of these couples of metal, it will be capable of giving to the fingers several small shocks.

A lover should be two things at once: the wild and a home.

We love like fireflies, how we gravitate to each others glow.

If he can’t hear you when you’re silent, he won’t hear you when you’re not.

There’s one fool at least in every married couple.