When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

I like the app where you can make your own memes. I make memes all the time and send them to my friends.

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

I was impressed with what someone like Karl Lagerfeld built and did and the house that he made, but there was never really a female figure I wanted to emulate.

Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

To be able to travel the world, especially to places I never thought I’d be… it’s really, you know, still fascinating for me.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Brad was a huge surprise to me. I think we were both the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t. I was quite content to be a single mom with Mad.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

When people get married young, you don’t really understand the true definition of marriage.

I don’t listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff. It’s all quite dramatic and atmospheric. You’d have an entire story in song. I never listen to, like, white music – I couldn’t sing you a Zeppelin or Floyd song.

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Small aim is a crime; have great aim.

Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

I’m a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t.

As a teenager, I went to Bali a lot, but it’s a long, long way from England. Which is why, when we bought Necker Island, we made it like a mini Bali.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

Patience is key for getting over a breakup. That, and trailing off your interaction after the breakup.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

I have rules for a lot of areas of my life. Love is not going to be one of them.

If I weren’t performing, I’d be a beauty editor or a therapist. I love creativity, but I also love to help others. My mother was a hairstylist, and they listen to everyone’s problems – like a beauty therapist!

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

Music is really driving my whole life.