“I just think I have too much anxiety to listen to music. Sometimes it feels like noise, and sometimes it’s so affecting that I can’t recover from it.”

I was born in St. Louis, but I’m from Maplewood, New Jersey. Maplewood is completely different than the rest of New Jersey. It’s very small. It’s quietly affluent but more low-key. Lauryn Hill is from my town, though.

Music is my form of cleansing and introspection, so I have to grow in order to accomplish it. SZA

Every day I pray to see myself the way God and others see me.

Your energy told me what your mouth couldn’t.

I just make music however I feel and pray that it connects, and if it does, I’m super thankful. I think genres are more for other people, not for yourself.

I don’t enjoy being interviewed. I feel like it exhausts a lot of my energy. I feel empty after.

Pain plus love and time = power.

I don’t have a background in music, and I have a short attention span. If you put me in the studio every day, I’m gonna get lost.

People grapple with labeling me as hip-hop, R&B, or pop, and it’s interesting to me. I’m just making music.

Don’t get discouraged with your skin when it doesn’t do what you want it to do, Give it some time. That’s the only way to get to know yourself.

I think music is honest and will make you do honest things.

I’m very into details, so I watch movies just for the details.

I don’t think I’m inherently feminist. I think the universe wants me to be a feminist, and I think I resonate with that. I think it just chose me to be this female energy, thing. And I’m very drawn to female energy, but I don’t really have any prerequisites in feminism. I just roll with it.

When your parents regulate everything you hear and everything you intake, it forces you to get creative in other ways. It sparked the writing bug and the very overactive imagination. Because I’ve had a lot of time by myself and a lot of time isolated from regular culture, I created my own.

Every day I grapple between ‘I’m going to get married’ and ‘I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone with a poodle.’

I went through this phase of Spandex, high heels, and fur coats when I was in my late teens and early twenties; before then, I lived in overalls and baggy T-shirts.

Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

Ultimately the Force is the larger mystery of the universe. And to trust your feelings is your way into that.

There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.

Everyone thinks their mom is a superhero, and l feel like I want to be just like my mom. A superhero. She’s a very strong lady.

If you are always allowed to stop training whenever you feel discomfort, you will find it too easy to give yourself permission to quit.

My pain is from craving to feel your skin locked in mine while you cry out for more.

Feeling more comfortable onstage is something I’ve worked on – it’s really about just being the artist I am.

When you’re feeling exhausted and completely out of breath, turn and fall into his arms and you will find your rest.