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

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.

Wearing a hijab never made me feel any more conservative – it made me feel safe. Then, after 9/11, I became the butt of a joke on the playground, so I stopped wearing it. Kids can be really cruel when you’re the only black girl in your Girl Scout troop.

I feel like when you say ‘activist,’ you have to have so much clarity, and I don’t always necessarily have so much clarity on how I want to help others, I just have this weird, deep urge to help other people. I’m trying to let God guide my body and use it as whatever kind of vehicle or vessel it needs to be.

It starts with trusting yourself, even if people are telling you you’re too young to trust yourself.

I want to excel at something, to follow through, to not be afraid.

Mental health and family above all things. Period.

I don’t listen to my own music, so to me, it’s awesome that people really like it. I was afraid that it wouldn’t connect with everyone. I’m more appreciative than anything. SZA

I have an abundant amount of love in my life, and I’m grateful for that.

I made this and have too much to say about it.

My general plan is good, though in the detail there may be faults.

I shall certainly never do that again. He employs a long, cold burn, a quiet and impassioned accumulation of detail, with calm, wit and clarity.

Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

When somebody criticise you, be happy and thankful because they have given you an opportunity to think about the matter more precisely and more detailed!

I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.

What is the history of mighty kingdoms and nations, but a detail of the ravages and cruelties of the powerful over the weak?

I read everything I could find: books and online. Sometimes bigger revelations came to me through finer details or something that you wouldn’t pick up just by surface reading.