“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.”

I have a really strong gluten allergy, and I’m pretty lactose-intolerant, like, in a big way, but I love cheese.

I’ve always loved playing with hair. I used to want dreads like Lauryn Hill, but my mom wouldn’t let me.

I’m a Scorpio with a Pisces moon. I am very critical of myself. I’m actually way less critical of others than I am of myself. I’m in my own head a lot. It’s hard and really discouraging.

Desperately yearning to accept its all as it should be.

Sugar makes me feel crazy – like, makes my body hurt kind of a thing. I don’t really eat fruit because it has a lot of sugar. I try not to eat a lot of red meat, but every now and again, I feel like I need iron or something – something that I’m missing.

I love empowering women. I think it’s crazy: if you ever try to belittle women, you’re playing yourself – I ride with whoever rides with me.

Searchin for peace be like fishing for water.

I’m a visual learner, so the film is a huge inspiration to me.

I’ve been known to wear pajamas onstage for the sole reason of wanting to make sure I’m free enough to execute new things vocally on stage and give my best performance possible.

I live in my imagination, so sometimes movies help me get lost. I feel like I’m in it.

I was raised orthodox Muslim. Very sheltered, very conservative.

I was a funky kid.

I was a gymnast for 13 years, so I was heavy into sports.

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 love folk. I love rap.

I learned everything the hard way – like, literally, everything. I know that God does that to people that he has lessons for. I just wish that I had learned less extreme lessons.

Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

All art is knowing when to stop.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.