Anybody who's made it will tell you, you can make it. Anyone who hasn't made it will tell you, you can't

I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation... so when I meet someone who's an 8-color type... I'm like, 'Hey girl, magenta!' and she's like, 'Oh, you mean purple!' and she goes off on her purple thing, and I'm like, 'No - I want magenta!'

You make a choice in your life, and it affects your life in all the ways, good and bad.

What I enjoy about the live experience is getting onstage, being handed a guitar that is in tune, taking it off mute, knowing that the very moment I want to play a note, I can play it. People are waiting on me and I'm waiting on me, and I have no idea what I'm going to play. That's the biggest joy in life.

I am beginning to know what it feels like to be a woman. To have people looking at you all the time. And I'm sorry ladies, I had no idea! But people are looking at me all the time. It's like I have musical boobies!

What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's.

In a time when everything can be next day and ordered and put on credit and paid for, music to me is promise, all promise, very little realization. It's the promise of walking into a room with a guitar and not being sure you will leave with an idea that will take, not being sure it won't slip away from you.