Lauryn Hill Quotes - Page 5

I do support artists standing by their beliefs, and walking with integrity. We have to find a better way to commercially exploit music, while giving artists their proper respect. This cannot be done while taking their contributions for granted, or trying to control the scope of their growth and power through threats and fear tactics.

I didn't have that intense ambition to be a musician or an actress. I just enjoyed it. And by enjoying it, because I loved it, it enabled me to get better at what I was doing, because there was a love behind it.

My concept of successful living is escaping the matrix, as we've talked about. It has very little to do with what people think success is. I actually feel successful right now, even though I don't have an album out, or a video or a song on the radio, because I'm trying to be obedient to His will.

I've leaned on God for so long. "Hey, God, you just gave me this gift, and I'm just going to go out there and sing." But I'm realizing how much larger and how expansive my gift becomes when I actually pay attention to it and try to practice and try to perfect it.

I think the work ethic that was established in my family was something very important. If you plant the seed, if you sow sparingly and reap sparingly. If you sow in abundance you'll reap in abundance.

I knew his life deserved a chance/But everybody told me to be smart/Look at your career they said/Lauren, baby use your head/But instead I chose to use my heart.

I used to play my records aloud until one night my mother was like, "This is too loud. I'm not having it," and so I put on headphones. But the headphones didn't stretch all the way to my bed from the record player, so I had to sleep on the floor in order to hear the records. I slept on the floor right next to the record player until I was probably 19 years old.

I was very confused. I didn't understand the difference between rebellion against God and rebellion against the system that's not God.

In my life the most influential people are people who are sort of brought to me, as opposed to people I seek out.

I am up there onstage alone with that guitar. I don't have to consider no one else and whether they are comfortable. I need very little.

That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in.

I had an economic system imposed on me.

Tell me who I've got to be, to get some reciprocity

I don't know anybody that's not emotionally unstable or schizophrenic.

I never did anything I'm really ashamed of.

My whole life at a certain point was studio, hotel, stage, hotel, stage, studio, stage, hotel, studio, stage. I was expressing everything from my past, everything that I had experienced prior to that studio stage time, and it was like you have to go back to the well, in order to give someone something to drink. I felt like a cistern, dried up and like there was nothing more. And it was so beautiful.

I ran very fast in the wrong direction.

I don't buy into that whole concept of success that I have this mountain with this moat around it and then I get into my big car and drive to my destination and never see people. That's not my concept of success.

If the entire week is a battlefield, reading the Bible is sort of like that parachute with the box of reserves that come in the middle of the war: food and water and the toothbrush and toilet paper.

Love and this close-knit family structure really helped to give me the confidence. To know that you have family to go back to is a help. It doesn't always happen biologically. Sometimes God gives you family in other forms, but I was very blessed. I have a very strong biological family.

Hip-Hop isn't just music, it is also a spiritual movement of the blacks! You can't just call Hip-Hop a trend!

Hip-Hop started out in the heart

Every time truth comes we hate it, because it's coming against our ego. Are you going to let the ego come between you and this person you love?

I don't feel like my money or my success defines me. I've always been very happy just bein' me.

I play my enemies like a game of chess