India Arie Quotes

"Listening to 'Songs in the Key of Life' always puts me in a good mood."

"Just like the air you breathe or the water you drink, music shapes you. The trouble is, most people don't use it to spread love and healing. But I think music can make a social contribution if you're responsible with it."

"Everybody has a spiritual body. Everybody has a physical body, and so your spiritual body is the stuff that holds all of your emotions like your body holds your organs, your food, your muscles, your water. Your spiritual body holds your emotional state and your mental state."

"Just to keep myself balanced, I do things like yoga and meditation."

"You need to take care of you and fortify yourself and then move out to take care of others."

"To spread love, healing, peace, and joy is my mission in life - and so I speak up."

"I've been trying to arrive at a person who is self-defined and able to make my own mistakes rather than having other people make them for me."

"If we can just focus our attention where it matters, we can effect change."

"The subconscious doesn't distinguish sarcasm and jokes. It just accepts what it hears. That's the power of words."

"I'm kind of like a folk singer mixed with soul, but I feel like if you really are a lover of hip-hop music, make the beat banging as possible and then put the message in so that people get the honey with the medicine."

"Obviously, I've been heartbroken. We all know what that feels like."

"'Open Door' was a world music project and bilingual. It was in Hebrew and English, and it's great. I do think it's really beautiful. But it's very emotional and very dark - in a good way."

"I don't really consider myself a teacher. I think - like, I have opinions like everyone else, and I just share my opinions."

"Everybody has their own path. I got mine."

"Nobody looked like me when I was growing up. None of the kids were as big as me, or as serious as me, or listened to the same music."

"Joe Sample was one of my heroes. I met him at the Curacao Jazz festival, and I fanned out like he was the Beatles!"

"I made a conscious decision when I was recording 'Acoustic Soul' to - and this is one of my mantras - follow the music and let the chips fall where they may."

"With 'Acoustic Soul,' I saw my music as sparse. But I didn't do that because I was making a commitment to be commercial. That's what made 'Acoustic Soul' so difficult to produce. It took 2 1/2 years because I couldn't figure out what I wanted and still be commercial."

"Nina Simone sacrificed so much to be as bold as she was about being black and about being female in an era where that could have cost her life."

"When it comes down to the song writing, I'm just very slow - very slow. Because the songs are about my life, so I'm doing emotional work on myself."

"I always have something by Stevie Wonder in my CD player."

"That's the kind of music I want SoulBird to represent: music with intelligence and heart, music that moves people in their souls and their bodies. Music with wings."

"At 16, I started really loving country music, and Collin Raye just had the most amazing ballads!"

"I know the things I say go out of my own mouth and into my own ears."

"This celebrity culture that hypnotizes people into thinking a person is literally not real because you see them on television is a spell the watcher him- or herself must break."

"When I was growing up, I only saw really brown people on 'The Cosby Show,' and they were rich, and their parents were doctors. It wasn't like my home."

"You wash your hands when you shake a bunch of hands. You have to wash your energy when you're around people. It's hard for me to say self-care is washing, although I think it is. So I made music for self-care. That's what it's for."

"I do believe in prophecy."

"What I love about Christmas music is it stays around every year and comes back."

"Sound is energy, and that energy resonates with your energy. And it gives you a certain feeling."