Erykah Badu Quotes

I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth.

My mom was the Diana Ross of our clan. She was always up-to-date, and always knew what to do and what not to do in a fashion sense.

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

I bring the staple of my culture.

Different periods, different cultures - it's just the way my mind works. My music is that way as well. There's a foundation but the inspiration comes from everywhere. I've been influenced by so many things.

That's the moment I learned that the more you believe in yourself, the stronger the vibration touches someone else, and things begin to happen the way you dreamed that they would.

All of my children are the same way I am. They're little artists too, in their own ways.

If you make a decision, a pact with someone, your friend, you should say, 'I'm gonna do this,' and you should stick to it.

My truth is relevant and my songs are relevant, but I have to recalibrate myself and speed up my vibrations so that I can communicate with the voice of this generation.

I think we [with Riccardo Tisci] share a sensibility about art - we pull from the ancient future.

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy. Take a salt bath. Do things that my parents were never able to do. I'm blessed to do anything I want so I decide to take the best care of my body and my family in the same way. Holistically. Vitally.

Hip-hop was created out of necessity. We needed to create some digitized things to help us understand what we were feeling.

Through [my children] patience, they're showing me how much they support what's going on, because I'm having to do a lot of work right now.

I could do a few more sit-ups and my waistline would be less difficult.

Erykah Badu projects don't even sound like Erykah Badu projects. I don't even have one album that sounds like another one of my albums.

The reason why you don't see people looking like me is because I don't encourage that. I encourage you to be you.

I've been a vegetarian since I was 19.

When I get ready to do an album, that means I have something to say for the sake of words, and I listen back to all of the things I've been creating and pull things from out of the air to go with them. It's almost like I start creating the album before I even think about creating it.

I don't have any particular thing I do ritualistically. I do the same thing every day. I get up. Drink a lot of water. Have a wheatgrass shot. Drink some green juice. Eat as healthy as I can.

I feel like I haven't done anything. What have I done? I've just made a few records.

The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good on the inside.

[The Land] is a film that just happens to be directed and written by a Puerto Rican guy with a black dad. It seemed like a very natural, human interaction between people who all just came from one common cesspool of bad luck.

People are uncomfortable with sexuality that’s not for male consumption.

Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.

When you're in a relationship you want it to work. My parents did, I did. But we are not taught how to make it work.

I mean thats a big part of our existence here on earth, the personal relationship we have with the person that we love, with the person that we make love to, with the person that we share our lives with. We expect a lot of things back from our loved one, and the lesson is to accept and not expect.

My fourth mother, my godmother, she passed away a couple years ago - her name was Gwen. She was the theater director over at the gym where I grew up and learned about all those awesome things I told you about already. She was the one who taught me terms like "upstage" and "downstage," all those technical things about the art of what I do - how to breathe what I see, how to move. They were all her tactics, not anything learned or given to me through a theory, but rather by her natural abilities.

I had the opportunity, as a child, to grow up in a community center where I was exposed to theater, music, art, and computer science; things that I would have never had the opportunity to even meet had it not been for those people taking time out of their schedules, helping us as children to travel all over the world while sitting in a gymnasium. That's what I did before I was a musician, before I was a recording artist, I was a teacher and a community leader.

Being honest is my job. That's what music is for me.

Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And, to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure.

I view my hair and clothes as functional art.

André and I are still best of friends, always have been and always will be. When our 18-year-old son, Seven, started high school, we both agreed to be in the same city, so André is in Dallas all the time, and we're always all together doing something.

I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push play and record.

I try to be honest and I keep moving.

It's just that little box in the middle of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Most of the time I go I don't even leave that apartment. I have just enough: a little bed, a little kitchen with two pots. I make some tea and I look out the window or just lay down.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If you want to relate to a certain audience or generation, you have to speak their language. I truly believe that.

It's weird, but if I decide to do an album, then the ideas start fitting themselves together. I consider myself a nice, slow burn. Plus, it's not a race. And I have a lot to share.

I'm pretty mutable as a human being.

I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It's fun to see what they'll say it is

I grew up with all mothers, all women. I come from a long line of matriarchs, very strong women.

Oh, yeah, I see the world differently now. Actually, when I first had the baby, I was breast-feeding him for two years straight. So we were together for two years of his life, every single day, all hours of the day. So I was two people, and I eventually morphed back into one

I trust the political system to be what it is. It's a structure to keep the country running, a boat to get us [citizens] from one side to the other, and it has the country's best interests at heart. Not the people's.

The girls just like to be in the shoes. They like to scuff up the floors and walk around in high-heeled shoes that are too big for them, all over the house.

Honey isn't really that good for you.

You don't have to believe everything you think.

I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy.