Erykah Badu Quotes

I love being an entertainer - not really fond of being a celebrity.

Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that.

It just works better for me to discriminate between which thoughts are mine and which come from elsewhere, before I even talk about them or express them - it helps to keep me focused on my path.

I'm more like an oven than a microwave.

All I want to do is give the world my heart... Record label tryina make me compromise my art.

I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.

What opens my heart is when my son wakes me up in the morning, nudging me and saying, 'Mommy, mommy!'

I don't know if I'll ever accomplish most of my dreams - I have so many.

I lived in New York for maybe a year and a half, from '95 to '97, but I live in Dallas. My whole family is there.

Some people come up and ask for an autograph and don't even look at me. They're like, 'Here, do it.' That don't bother me, but it doesn't open my heart.

I'm learning from them! Everyone says that, but it's true. You learn more about yourself from them than from any other lesson.

What a frequency What a voice. I love Bilal. I couldn't imagine a music world without his voice.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

They usually have a piano in every nursing home, and I always wanted to perform for whoever would listen when I learned something. I grew to understand very early that a lot of these people who are in nursing homes are elderly and don't have a lot of things that give them joy from day to day.

Now my record deal helps me to do things for free or give more time to my community than I could otherwise.

I remember when I signed with Kedar Entertainment through Universal Records. It was my first record deal and it's the one I still have now. At that time, there had been a couple of opportunities I was almost given, but at the last minute the giver came back and told me it couldn't happen.

They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another.

I know that I want to concentrate more on my inside-pretty than my outside-pretty, because thats gonna go away. But if your inside is beautiful, it never wears away. The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good inside.

I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear.

I really can't say what inspires me the most, because I'm inspired by just about everything. My feelings and relationships, my family, Scooby-Doo. Opinion of my work. Everything. Not just one thing.

I encourage breaking free of self inflicted holding pens. I encourage the use of intelligence in every decision. I encourage creating.

I'm pretty mutable as a human being, period - if you put me on Pluto, I can figure it out.

I imagine that when I am creating a song or a project or an album or putting some clothing together or cooking a meal, whatever it is, I don't really have a recipe. The fun part is to throw that big piece of clay in the middle of the table as hard as I can, and whatever shape it takes, that's what shape it takes, and then I start to carve away.

My nine-year-old daughter is very creative and colorful and trendy.

I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It's not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it's a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it.

I strongly believe that the more positive my vibration is, the clearer my message will be. I keep my negative thoughts from infiltrating my pathway and my dreams. Other people's thoughts are none of my business.

My second mother is my maternal grandmother. Her name is Thelma. She also gave me a very powerful medicine; she made sure that I knew my role as a young lady and as someone with moral structures and principles. She taught me that if I was going to be involved with anything, whether it be spirituality, music, or some skill, that I have to practice.

People who say that music is dead or hip-hop is dead are refusing to evolve.

In the morning, instead of saying to yourself, ‘I got to wake up’ say ‘I get to wake up!’

Hip-Hop is bigger than the government.

I really enjoy being the child's 'welcoming committee' and to help someone usher his or her spirit into the world in a very peaceful way is very effortless to me.

Because you're responsible for [children]. You are there to protect them, not possess them. I tell them, "Watch me and you might learn something."

I have a daughter who's four, who's dainty and princess-esque. I still get to dress her like my little accessory. I think I have one more year to do that, then she's going to get her own ideas - so I better move quickly!

I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison.

Whenever I think about funk music, it has a look - and that's how it sounds.

I'm only in competition with my last level.

What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me.

I was the bohemian in my family, the "this is my favorite shoe and I don't care if it has tape around it" kind of person. The tape could become a fashion statement. Or a political statement.

Whereas I want everything to be peaceful during a birth, I take the total opposite approach when I'm helping someone come to terms with leaving this place - I play Richard Pryor records.

I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian.

I don't want to think too much about how I'm carving and what I'm carving - you are just carving away the excess clay and there's a piece underneath there. And it's kind of like getting out of the way. Maybe that's what the commonality is: It's getting out of the way so that the art can speak.

When it comes to fashion or any high art, you have to have a combination of delicacy, along with taste.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

I can be Erykah the human being more than the celebrity.

I don't feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel me.

I don't know... I've been doing it for 17 years now, so of course I've seen pictures and thought, "Oh my god, I wish I would've never worn that." Yeah, but I did! And it was probably because it was my favorite thing at the time - my clothes always have some kind of emotion attached to them.

Art is the absence of fear.

...When it come to da: " What it do?! I don't fall for da: "Woop- TeE- WoOoo!