No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

I was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

‚House of Balloons‘ was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

It’s nice to be included in people’s fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your own sake.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I’ve always thought it isn’t that different from everybody else’s.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

A smart girl leaves before she is left.

What I tell my kids is, ‚I’m preparing you for college and for life. So, having independence, knowing how to set your own boundaries, figuring out how to make that balance. We still have screen-time rules.‘

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

I don’t feel very comfortable defending my fashion except to say that people don’t have to buy it. You do have to consume. You have to live. If you’ve got the money to be able to afford it, then it’s really good to buy something from me, but don’t buy too much.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.

Hermits have no peer pressure.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.