I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

I’ve had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, ‚Your music sucks, you don’t know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don’t know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.‘

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women’s organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man’s world.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

I’m German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn’t exist any more.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

The working men, I’ll go by and they’ll whistle. At first they whistle because they think, ‚Oh, it’s a girl. She’s got blond hair and she’s not out of shape,‘ and then they say, ‚Gosh, it’s Marilyn Monroe!‘

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men’s clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

I wanted to sell a million records, and I sold a million records. I wanted to go platinum; I went platinum. I’ve been working nonstop since I was 15. I don’t even know how to chill out.

I’m not a sheep.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

I do have tatoos, and I do wear leather, but there are other sides of me, that my film express.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

If you’re performing music that is not who you are or where you’re at, it is painful. It’s painful for the performer and for the audience.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

I always was a Christian… whatsoever a man thinks in his heart is who he is.

I don’t really like to call myself a brand, and I don’t like to think of myself as a brand. I’m a singer, a songwriter, a musician and a performer. And an actress, and all the other things that I do. When you add it all together, some might call it a brand, but that’s not my focus.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage – they’re just not stages you’re allowed to see.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

Because I’m small, I’ve been called things from ‚Happy Feet‘ to ‚Little Face.‘

Looking at 2014, I look back: we made more money off ‚Mailbox Money‘ than we would have made off taking an advance from anybody. We made more money letting our fans buy the stuff directly from us than what any label could have offered us.

Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side, not the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

Cardi B put a lot of work in.

I have always been that girl in the back who doesn’t say anything.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.