Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind
Your yes means nothing if you can't say no.
Music is like a lover that I can't commit to, but I seem to always find myself in bed with.
Once you encounter people who are really testing the limits of kindness, that's when you start to build up a shield and close yourself down.
I am here no longer just a vision birthed into this body I accept my praise, my blame, my joy, my sorrow I realize we are, in truth, the truth we seek God, perfect this very moment.
Any ideas of “other” are complicated, and otherness is relative to personal ideas of “normal.”
Children are born with their own optimism. They have a clarity and a simplicity that we can only wish for.
Music is my only guide. I don't care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn't give a hoot about what the purists said.
It's hard being bisexual, omnisexual, multisexual, whatever you want to call it, when people have their agenda and expect you to just represent their agenda.
We're all just bags of bones and muscle and hormones; I'll never understand what makes our minds do the things we do. It's like that statue of the monkey holding a skull. We're trying to use a thing we don't understand to understand ourselves.
Looking at the media today, I'm quite ashamed of myself, of things I've participated in. Everything is marketed to sex and gossip and it's just a shame that those are the things at the forefront, on people's minds, those are the things that make you popular, what you have on or how little you have on and it has nothing to do with music, nothing to do with sports it has nothing to do with the things so many communities put their faith in. It's just a sad place to be.
I think leaders are incapable of the strength that passive resistance entails.
My legacy is in my family, not in my work. For me. I don't know about for other people. I try to forget a lot.
It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.
I stopped beating up on myself. I stopped asking myself why I didn't sell this number of records, why I don't have corporate sponsorship. I just don't buy into any of that anymore.
I think secretly I've realized after my time on the planet that I have no control over what people feel about me or need from me, so I just have a more laid-back approach in my apologies.
God looks out for fools and babies.
I'm becoming more and more apolitical - I think the most revolutionary thing you can do is just live your life and have a good time. Before they scoop you up on the street or you die.
I tried to be as positive as possible, because I have the same birthday as Michael Jackson. He is my cosmic brother. I love him.
I find myself wanting to make music at the dining room table or in the bedroom - I'm kind of a mobile writer, so I sort of move around the house. But the attic is definitely where I can make the most noise. While everyone on the lower floors screams 'Earthquake!' But no! It's just my bass!
My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.
My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.
Your government has problems...my government has problems. I can't be a judge. All I can do is be an ambassador of love. I'm a musician, not a soldier, and if I'm invited to a place in order to play and bring love, I'll always accept the invitation.
My greatest influence is Jimi Hendrix, and if he's been reincarnated, or if he's looking down, sideways, or looking up, I just wanted to tell him that I love him and thank him for opening doors for me. I just wanted to make it beautiful for him.
Not to be a Bible-thumper, but there really is nothing new under the sun.
