India Arie Quotes

Singing is just another outlet to express what I feel and to show everyone who I really am. I really don't talk about my personal life that much in interviews because that's my life, but with music, the way I write explains who I am.

People have mentioned, 'Maybe you should try to be more sexy. Look at how this butt stuff propelled this person to the top of the chart; it's amazing!' And I'm like, 'What if I really want to sing something to people?' I speak my mind. I want to be that person people feel they can listen to.

My music is the most 'me' thing about me. Everything is in my music.

I feel what I sing, and I sing what I feel. Really, that's all I can do.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

I'm such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

'Crush' is probably the most honest project I've ever written. It's my voice.

Kenny Loggins pours his heart and soul into the music he makes. He'll take you with him through everything he's going through, which is not easy.

It's truthful - every single song is an extension of me and a truthful piece of inspiration from my past or something I'm currently going through.

I know definitive points in my life and in relationships because of my songs. I write my music so that I'll never be bored of it.

I realized in the early days I just didn't edit at all. But I think you become a little more cagey with your lyrics when you know more people are going to hear them and make assumptions about you as a person. Realizing that, you want to be a little more opaque.

What's the point of a song if you can't be honest?

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

I'm just basically spillin' out my emotions to the world. 'Cause rap is about emotion. And I want you to feel what I'm feelin', 'cause that's what it's all about.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

Having grown up so familiar with creating a pleasing facade, I now end up compelled to reveal things inside and say, 'Okay, now you really see me. Do you still love me?' And then it's never enough; it always has to be total self-revelation.

Critics can be harsh and I think it's going to take me a long time to make people see what I have inside of me and that I really put my guts into movies and that I'm not superficial and that I'm not just a pretty face.

Music is just kind of an expression of who I am. It's what I do.

I write songs from the heart, and I don't hold back.

I find the greatest songs in the world come out of pain, and I don't like it! Here's what it does: It strips away all of your facade. It makes you so honest. It's cleansing.

I have to live authentically at all times. And that's part of what makes me an artist. I'm not scared to do that.

I don't like to be entertaining. I don't like the feeling of being entertaining. If there was a musical or a comedy that was not just for entertainment but was rooted in something I could relate to on a real level, then I think I would do it.

I know what my sound is. I'm just trying to get it out there how I can explain it. I'm not trying to write or put out some music that doesn't represent me.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.