Alicia Keys Quotes

I've always been very private, maybe because I discovered my mother, who is a wonderful lady, is very emotional.

I grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood.

Everybody goes through their life in different ways. I definitely am having my journey. It evolves and changes. At some moments, I feel totally off center and trying to find my way back.

To be able to help a 13-year-old kid from the Bronx follow her dreams just by letting her know she's not forgotten in this crazy world - that's why I got involved with Frum Tha Ground Up.

When I was first learning songs, I'd have a favorite song, and I'd take the chords and twist them around. I'd learn the chords and then play them backward. That was my first experimenting with writing a song.

Music is funny. I shouldn't even ever talk about music, because you can have all the ideas in your head, and it never goes exactly the way that you think it's gonna go.

I grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood. I grew up around drugs, alcohol, prostitution, I grew up around everything, and I think part of seeing that from really young has made me really steer very far away from it in all of its forms.

The desire to play has always been in me. I remember my first experience at about four or five of really dying to sing and dying to play that came from no one telling me to do so.

Quiet moments recharge me.

I would hate to make music and people love me for something that isn't me.

From the beginning, I've had to juggle and weigh the silly things people say - and I've learnt that they're meaningless, and they're mostly inaccurate. So I don't worry about it, because there's nothin' for me to deal with.

I love the written word so much, I know it's gonna flow naturally.

Some of the greatest artists did their best work when they got political.

I think conveying the emotion of the collective "we" is pretty incredible. Especially in tumultuous times like we are in now.

I'm not ashamed of what I am and that I have curves and that I'm thick. I like my body.

I just wanted to be who I was, which was like so many other girls I knew. We grew up in the city, had a hard edge and obstacles to overcome, but we were still young and beautiful. I didn't want to be all dressed up, all made up - I wanted to be myself, which hadn't been done before.

Sometimes I've gotten photographs back and people have literally shaven off pieces of me, and I tell them to put it back.

I am able to hang with the hardest, the baddest, the worst, and I'm able to hang with the most proper and be at ease. I'm able to hang with any skin colour, any belief. I just fit in everywhere.

I've always valued the input of the people I love. So in the past, whenever I'd make a decision - what to wear to an event, whether to pursue a job opportunity - I'd consult those closest to me, like my mother, husband, or manager.

We have the potential to help people out of poverty, out of disease, out of slavery and out of conflict. Too often we turn the other way because we think there's nothing we can do.

I like to do outdoorsy things: hikes, trails, running, swimming. I love the sun. I'm all about the warmth.

Risk the fall to know how it feels to fly.

Love will come find you, just to remind you of who you are.

You've got to love what's yours.

I really like to live my life in a low-key fashion.

I've seen so many lives turn around from the impossible. I have come to embrace the idea that even the simplest act of understanding, love and attention can produce the biggest results.

I love being a mom. And I think what I love the most is the way it makes me think about what's important and what's not important. What to fight for and what to just be cool with. What it is that I'm teaching through example and what it is that I was taught that I don't want to teach.

All of us are different. That's what makes us interesting and special. I don't want to be anything like another person. I want to be totally myself and go against the grain, forge my own path. I've learned that being different is what makes you stand out. It makes everything so much more intriguing.

I dream about speaking in big forums about issues that need to be spoken about. I dream about helping others who I know and love, helping them realize their dreams. I dream about being able to express myself through acting and writing, definitely. I dream about bringing more realism into the world. Sometimes I just feel like certain things are so glossed over and covered up and swept under the rug and I just want to bring them out.

Everything's gonna be alright.

My son makes me super giddy, especially when he laughs. His laugh makes me laugh like a maniac!

I don't have a ton of friends, but the friends I have are great ones. I don't have huge family, but the family I have is a great one.

When I did get signed and I was going around letting people know what I was about, that's exactly how I did it: me on the piano, playing a couple of songs I'd written and talking to the people in between. That's how I got my performance chops up.

We listen so much to everybody - more than ever, because we have a kabillion voices whose opinion we can access - and we care so much if everybody agrees with us. To bust through all of the noise is very challenging.

Soul music is timeless.

What acting does bring that music doesn't bring for me is the opportunity is the opportunity to be completely different in every way from whom you normally are, the person that you are when you wake up in the morning is who you are in your life. But to take that and have the opportunity to be the complete opposite of that, is the excitement of it.

A lot of times I watch TV and I watch film and there's so many things I'd love to talk about that I feel don't get the opportunity to be shown. Sometimes things become very stereotypical and one-sided, and I feel like it's such a colorful world.

How far you go depends on what you want for yourself, how much you're willing to leave on the floor, and how much you wanna face the fears you have inside of you. It's everything we're all dealing with every day.

All women are NATURALLY, bad ass!

No matter how far you are. No matter how long it takes him. Through Distance And Time I'll be waiting.

Writing in my journal keeps me focused on my spirit and what I need or feel.

Many things inspire me. First and foremost, my family, my husband, and our son. I find that the love we share fills me up and makes me see and appreciate life in a different way.

I was tired and I had overworked myself and burnt myself out. So I went to Egypt by myself. When I saw what was built there, it made me understand how powerful we are, that we can create anything. And I felt like I needed to create things that were timeless too.

There are so many things where I realize, like, simple circumstance, like the simple choice that I made one night to not do that and to do this, one night could have changed everything.

The last thing I want is to walk into my house after a long day and see all the Grammys and awards. It would make me feel weird.

I realize that I want something more. Success is great, but then you also wake up in your hotel room at four in the morning and you're like, wouldn't it be nice to have someone here with me.

I'm so grateful that I can play and that I can execute what I hear in my head, because that's the tricky part.

I've always been strong-minded, but I wonder.