We are taught to view pain as an enemy, not a teacher. But pain is the right hand of growth and transformation. Pain is in the history of all human wisdom.

Squint your eyes and look closer I'm not between you and your ambition I am a poster girl with no poster I am thirty-two flavors and then some And I'm beyond your peripheral vision So you might want to turn your head Cause someday you might find you're starving and eating all of the words you said.

The stronger I am in my personal life, the more energy I have to look outward, to address my society.

You're trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling, and falling is like this.

I walk like I'm on a mission 'cause that's the way I groove. I got more and more to do and less and less to prove.

All the wrong people have the power of suggestion and the freedom of the press is meaningless if nobody asks a question.

Music has as many roles as people make it. I traveled to Burma once years ago to witness the people's struggle for democracy, meet some people and learn some stuff. And I had this incredible experience over and over again in the Burmese jungle or refugee camps or health clinics with very oppressed, very devastated people. I show up, and I'm white and I'm American and I'm privileged and I have an experience that these people can't fathom and vice versa. There was this huge chasm when I met people for all good reasons.