Alicia Keys Quotes

Not because I'm trying to be fabulous, but I love those big crazy Jackie O shades.

I've met many young women who are HIV positive and courageously fighting the disease. Their determination to live a full life and see their children live in a better world is deeply inspiring to me.

You just can't take a day for granted. We had to work really hard for anything, and so that's been instilled in me. And I don't look at myself as better than anybody else, because in an instant everything can change.

I'm committed to evolving and growing and sitting at the head of my own table with no fears or limitations. But I've also learned to be more open now and more spontaneous in life.

Our mission goes beyond commerce, it goes beyond technology. Our intent is to preserve music's importance in our lives, music is the language of love, of laughter, of heartbreak, of mystery. It's the world's true, true, without question, universal language.

When I first started getting into the business, a young woman in a music game that was mostly men, I did feel inadequate.

I'm discovering my sexual side, and exploring relationships. You know, sensual stuff. And I'm discovering a lot of sides of myself, stuff I've buried. So the music is also therapeutic, to come to terms with things. And I feel now like my head is in the right space.

If we took the time to learn more about different places and people, perhaps we would have more empathy for each other.

There are certain things we come into this world having to defeat. And for me, and I would not be surprised if a lot of women feel this same way, it's this thing of not being 100 percent comfortable with myself.

I love children and I love family and I love that interaction. Because I had a really close relationship with my mother, I understand that deep powerful love, and it's so beautiful. To be a mother to a child is the most brilliant gift; it's gorgeous.

Wait, I'm deciding to be my own individual self. And it looks nothing like what anyone else is doing.

I've always expressed myself best through writing. I've gotten out all of my deepest feelings that way for as long as I can remember.

I wouldn't mind being in one place for two months or so. It really doesn't sound so bad!

If I can remain excited about the music that I'm giving you, then you're damn sure going to be excited about it.

I'm the cofounder of Keep a Child Alive. We provide medicine for families affected by HIV and AIDS in places like Africa and India.

I was always amazed the way people would come in looking one way and transform completely to the point where I couldn't recognize their language, their accent, the way they looked, their hair, their face even changed becoming so inside of the character.

I pray before everything. When I wake up, before I eat, before I perform, before I go to sleep, in the moments I need guidance.

With each new day, I'm learning how to take control in order to have balance in my life. I plan time for myself and my loved ones and take it.

I feel the presence of a higher power. I believe that what you give is what you get. It's universal law. I believe in the power of prayer and of words. I've learned that when you predict that negative things will happen, they do.

If I didn't love it, I would not record it.

Here's my pet peeve: The not-so-unstated rule that all women are only to be treated as sexual objects and gawked at-you know, sitting up against a car, washing something, bending over, licking something. That just drives me crazy.

Simplicity makes me happy.

No one will take care of you if you don't take care of yourself.

It's not until I hear songs that I've done, that I realize how much of an inspiration music from the '60s and '70s has been.

Rarely, I think, do you find a relationship where you can experience things equally.

It's when we become afraid of everything and worried about everything that you are never going to reach your highest potential.

Every moment is beautiful; delicious even! Every moment I'm learning and living in a way I never have before. Being present in a way I never have before. Existing in moments I never have before.

I'm definitely a nerd. I'm a cool-ass nerd, but I am definitely a nerd.

I feel like the majority of the fear that I had or that we have we hold from other people. They're like people that we trust; they're their fears. All of a sudden we think that they're our fears.

A lot of people, they've been saying to me, oh don't get married. It ruins everything. And I'm like, damn.

I think I grew up really fast; I grew up in this really fast-paced business, and I never understood what it meant to take a break or take time off or recover, and I paid for it.

Stevie Wonder's records introduced me to '70s soul when I was 12 or 13.

I lived with my mom in a really small apartment. My bedroom was like in the living room. That's why I still love to sleep on couches now.

Good food is an amazing blessing. Whenever you can sit down at a table, eat food that is extremely delicious, and are surrounded by people you love...it's: Wow, life is good.

Adam Levine and I remade the Rolling Stones' classic Wild Horses, and it is right up my alley, that whole style. It has a style of its own but still stays very true to the classic arrangement, and I love it.

You can be very fulfilled as a mother, but that can't be the only way you are fulfilled. What about being a woman? What about being yourself? Your awareness of what's happening in the world? It lives altogether in a way that makes a whole. I guess I'd say I'm the wholest I've ever been.

I think it's the ego in us that screws us up.

The climate of today is not really focused as much as it was then on being able to speak about different cultural issues or different situations that were going on politically.

I believe in the limitlessness of humans. We're capable of incredible things. At times, that realization is frightening.

I definitely want to act, but I also want to score movies, and I have this idea to fuse classical music with other styles that would give it a different perception.

I acted before I sang. And I did The Cosby Show, and things like that. But the music kind of came first. And it was a part of my essence. So I knew that I would evolve into this world.

You are what you listen to

I can do what I want to do, lucky me. But when these people are coming at me and asking these things, they don't really care about me. And I have felt like there were all these people who just wanted to use me.

If I want to be alone, some place I can write, I can read, I can pray, I can cry, I can do whatever I want - I go to the bathroom.

Things can be really empty in this world, and I don't just mean the music world. It can become a very meaningless place if you don't really understand: Who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing? To feel fulfillment and have a deeper level of understanding, personally, that is the most important thing.

How terrible would it have been if I had come out with some watered-down version of who I am? People fell in love with the real me, and I still feel blessed that that was how the journey began.

I do feel like I owe something, but not to the industry. When you say "industry," I think of a group of people who don't really care much about you and treat you as a commodity. So, in that regard, I don't feel like I owe anything. But the people who've always been supportive of me and have always seen me for my greatest potential-those are the people who I feel like I owe something to. I feel like I am their voice. I owe it them to represent them in a way that they can be proud of.

You can't really compare people. That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned, because comparing yourself to someone else really stops you from being who you are.