Lauryn Hill Quotes

I got into direct confrontation with everybody I love.

I do support artists standing by their beliefs, and walking with integrity. We have to find a better way to commercially exploit music, while giving artists their proper respect. This cannot be done while taking their contributions for granted, or trying to control the scope of their growth and power through threats and fear tactics.

The sweetest thing I've ever known was like the kiss on the collarbone.

To me that's a reflection of love, when someone can see you enjoying yourself, and want to participate, or want to encourage, or want to help you to do something that you enjoy.

The only help I need to live, is unprofessional. The only wealth I have to give, is not material. And if you need much more than that, I'm not available.

I ran very fast in the wrong direction.

You might win some, but you just lost one.

When I have a creative insight, there is a high. I think back in the day, I made music as much as I did because it made me feel so good. I think you could argue that there is a creative addiction - but, you know, the healthy kind.

My whole life at a certain point was studio, hotel, stage, hotel, stage, studio, stage, hotel, studio, stage. I was expressing everything from my past, everything that I had experienced prior to that studio stage time, and it was like you have to go back to the well, in order to give someone something to drink. I felt like a cistern, dried up and like there was nothing more. And it was so beautiful.

Reality is easy. It's deception that's the hard work.

Our podium is the music. It's really important that we stay focused, because things become misconstrued in the media.

My mother gave me a piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. The correction was the meat, the substance. And then she would sandwich that, sandwich that with another piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. That was very important in shaping and molding our morality, our understanding of ourselves, making sure that we didn’t think we were better than or less than anyone, feeling no more worthy or no less worthy than anyone else.

Love is an incredible thing but we don't know love like we should. Unconditional love we don't know it because if a person stops stimulating us, we stop loving them.

Hypocrites always wanna play innocent

From the first time someone says, Who do you think you are? we learn how to repress.

I think what people are attracted to about me, if anything, is my passion. People got exposed to my passion through music and song first.

If I never won a Grammy, I would be satisfied, if in fact I could help people. I don't say that because it sounds like something cool to say.

We have these images, these icons before us that are not reality.

People need to understand that the Lauryn Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at the time. I had to step away for the sake of the machine. I was being way too compromised. I felt uncomfortable having to smile in someone's face when I really didn't like them or know them well enough to like.

Tomorrow is always another day to make things right.

My mother has all my awards, because if I walked downstairs every day and saw all my achievements it would be so easy to become complacent.

We don't want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

Let me be patient, let me be kind, make me unselfish, without being blind.

What was freely given to me, I freely give.

Be honest, brutally honest. That is what's going to maintain relationships.

I consider myself a crayon... I may not be your favorite color but one day you'll need me to complete your picture.

Every time that God navigates my ship, there's nothing cerebral going on. There's very little thought. It's almost as if I have the directions. Every time I try to do it myself, I'm conjuring up my own concoction and trying.

See fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need. And I just retired from the fantasy part.

Love and this close-knit family structure really helped to give me the confidence. To know that you have family to go back to is a help. It doesn't always happen biologically. Sometimes God gives you family in other forms, but I was very blessed. I have a very strong biological family.

We don't know love like we should. We always talk about 'I have unconditional love' unconditional love is... we don't even know it. Because if a person stops stimulating us, we stop loving them. You're not interesting to talk to anymore, goodbye. But that real love, that love that sometimes is difficult, difficult to have. That's that love. And that's a confidence builder.

I hope that by people seeing the result of freedom that they'll want some, too.

I don't buy into that whole concept of success that I have this mountain with this moat around it and then I get into my big car and drive to my destination and never see people. That's not my concept of success.

I am no longer going to become a fictional character to please people. That's too much work.

I am up there onstage alone with that guitar. I don't have to consider no one else and whether they are comfortable. I need very little.

Whether Jew or Gentile, I rank top percentile...

To those supporters who were told that I abandoned them, that is untrue. I abandoned greed, corruption, and compromise, never you, and never the artistic gifts and abilities that sustained me.

We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it.

How you gon' win when you ain't right within. Uh uh come again

The danger I faced was not accepted as reasonable grounds for deferring my tax payments, as authorities, who despite being told all of this, still chose to pursue action against me, as opposed to finding an alternative solution.

Everything takes place in a season. There was a season when that's all I did was listen to the music. Now I'm just in a place where I don't listen, I create. And if I do listen there are specific things that I listen to, and for specific reasons.

If the entire week is a battlefield, reading the Bible is sort of like that parachute with the box of reserves that come in the middle of the war: food and water and the toothbrush and toilet paper.

That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in.

Think black love, think universal love. Just think love.

I had to confront my fears and master my every demonic thought about inferiority, insecurity, or the fear of being black, young, and gifted in this Western culture.

With the things that I love, I tried to put a couple seeds, a bunch of seeds in the ground and see what sprung up. Sometimes it was acting and sometimes it was music. But whatever it was I continued to plant.

Never be afraid of not knowing. Find out.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.

I find, even though it's raining, I just go outside. I look outside and I'm just so blessed to see it and to experience it, because for such a long time I was just indoors.