Meshell Ndegeocello

“I'm always tryin' to do something new, tryin' to look like a beginner.”

“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!”

“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'm pushing ahead on my own - you no longer need a large record company to make you a star.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Allow the artist to finish the piece of work before you critique it.”

“I joke that a person of color would never make a movie like 'Midnight in Paris.' Nostalgia isn't so enticing.”

“You make a choice to make music or be an actor, and people automatically think they can have access to your life.”

“I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.”

“Children are born with their own optimism. They have a clarity and a simplicity that we can only wish for.”

“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.”

“God looks out for fools and babies.”

“There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?”

“It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.”

“I'm a true believer that unless you're Prince or Stevie Wonder - and even Prince is showing that he needs help - not everybody can produce themselves. I'm definitely not that person.”