Top 66 India Arie Quotes

I’ve been trying to arrive at a person who is self-defined and able to make my own mistakes rather than having other people make them for me.

In hindsight, I feel like I made the right decision to choose production that would get played on black radio.

I think anyone who is ever on TV is a role model for somebody.

One of the things that helped me to be confident is to be the kind of musician that I respect. I always liked musicians who wrote their own songs, and so I started writing my own songs.

It’s not my place to say how Zoe Saldana perceives herself, and I can’t say how anybody else perceives her, either. I see her as a black person of Hispanic origin, but I don’t even know what that really means, because I don’t know anything about race and Hispanic culture.

I always felt like – I mean, I was told, really – I couldn’t go too far with the productions because it didn’t appeal to black radio. It wasn’t until I decided I was going to do what I wanted to do or I was going to quit that I empowered myself. I took my power back.

Our food choices show up on our body.

I want to always be classy and honest, and I always want to have fun with music, and if I can’t really express who I am through my music, then it’s not really fun anymore.

I’ve always wanted my music to serve a certain purpose.

That’s the kind of music I want SoulBird to represent: music with intelligence and heart, music that moves people in their souls and their bodies. Music with wings.

It took me almost wanting to retire to realize that you need to ask for what you need. Everybody needs something different, but whatever it is you need, you need to ask for it and figure out how to get it.

Joe Sample was one of my heroes. I met him at the Curacao Jazz festival, and I fanned out like he was the Beatles!

Even when it doesn’t look good, it’s always good. Even the worst thing, there’s always something good that comes out of it. I’ve learned that.

The thought crossed my mind about not wanting to alienate my fan base, but I don’t know what would alienate them or bring them in, so I decided not to think about it.

Just like the air you breathe or the water you drink, music shapes you. The trouble is, most people don’t use it to spread love and healing. But I think music can make a social contribution if you’re responsible with it.

I didn’t even listen to Bob Marley until I was 17.

For the first ten years of my career, I felt suffocated. People constantly stood over me while I tried to create. And in 2009, I hit rock bottom. I couldn’t find myself because I was looking to be defined by the music industry or by being number one on the Billboard charts.

I write about my experiences, so a lot of times, I do write about people.

With ‘Acoustic Soul,’ I saw my music as sparse. But I didn’t do that because I was making a commitment to be commercial. That’s what made ‘Acoustic Soul’ so difficult to produce. It took 2 1/2 years because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted and still be commercial.

I was born in love with music. My mother is a singer. Many of my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side are musical. My grandparents sang and played blues piano. It’s literally in my blood.

Just to keep myself balanced, I do things like yoga and meditation.

I don’t really consider myself a teacher. I think – like, I have opinions like everyone else, and I just share my opinions.

What I love about Stevie Wonder is the way he makes people feel. He’s one of the best examples of how music can heal.

Everybody has their own path. I got mine.

Saying things on paper that I would never, ever say, and saying things to myself, admitting things to myself, about myself and my personality, just putting it on paper, is how I deal with emotional pain.

You need to take care of you and fortify yourself and then move out to take care of others.

Could a person really make a social contribution through music consciously? I mean, beyond making a person happy to hear the song and more making a social contribution consciously through your music? For me, Stevie Wonder is the paragon of that. And I didn’t want to be Stevie Wonder, but I did want to do what he does.

To spread love, healing, peace, and joy is my mission in life – and so I speak up.

So many people have been abused. It’s not rare; it’s a very common human experience, and we survive.

I’m actually not a fan of the word ‘woke.’ I think the connotation of that means being socially aware, which is a beautiful thing to be. But it does not take into account being self-aware.

I made a conscious decision when I was recording ‘Acoustic Soul’ to – and this is one of my mantras – follow the music and let the chips fall where they may.

I’m not just making rhymes and making melodies. I’m expressing my true life force, energy.

When it comes down to the song writing, I’m just very slow – very slow. Because the songs are about my life, so I’m doing emotional work on myself.

Listening to ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ always puts me in a good mood.

I’ve never said anything that I didn’t want to say on a record, ever.

There’s a difference in being opinionated and judgmental; I’m still trying to figure out what that fine line is – I think we are all.

I’ve spent my entire life trying to figure out why I was different than everybody else. Why is my voice so deep? Why am I so muscular?

Obviously, I’ve been heartbroken. We all know what that feels like.

I was scared of failing, and I was scared of succeeding. I just wanted to be in a safe space and not grow too big or be too little.

Some people say, ‘If she’s so real, why does she call herself with a made-up name?’ Well, India is my real name. Or they say, ‘If she’s so real, why does she wear makeup?’ I didn’t know there was anything wrong with makeup.

You wash your hands when you shake a bunch of hands. You have to wash your energy when you’re around people. It’s hard for me to say self-care is washing, although I think it is. So I made music for self-care. That’s what it’s for.

What I love about Christmas music is it stays around every year and comes back.

I feel like I’m always gonna sing and write songs because it’s me.

The subconscious doesn’t distinguish sarcasm and jokes. It just accepts what it hears. That’s the power of words.

At 16, I started really loving country music, and Collin Raye just had the most amazing ballads!

I like being a role model – people have told me that I am a role model for empowered women, but I don’t see myself that way.

I don’t want the world to get any worse. I want to make it better.

If we can just focus our attention where it matters, we can effect change.

When I was growing up, I only saw really brown people on ‘The Cosby Show,’ and they were rich, and their parents were doctors. It wasn’t like my home.

Between ’06 and ’09, I dealt with pain by eating. And I was like, ‘Oh, crap, eating makes you gain weight!’

Now that I have better producer chops, a country album is something I want to do one day. I don’t know who’s going to put it out. But when I do, I don’t think people will call it ‘country music.’ They’ll probably call it ‘neo-soul.’

Every once in a while, I find something that I’m interested in just because of the singing, like the Goo Goo Dolls.

There’s just something creatively fulfilling about watching a movie and writing a song for it because it helps you put on another pair of shoes.

I am on an album with theater icon Billy Porter called the ‘Soul of Richard Rodgers.’ Our duet is called ‘Carefully Taught.’

If I don’t have the right clothes, I feel weird walking out; I don’t feel comfortable in what I have on. I have different colors that I want to wear on different days because it makes me feel different.

Basically, I listen to voices. If they write good songs and they can sing, I’ll probably like it.

Everybody has a spiritual body. Everybody has a physical body, and so your spiritual body is the stuff that holds all of your emotions like your body holds your organs, your food, your muscles, your water. Your spiritual body holds your emotional state and your mental state.

In my opinion, you just have to make the music. Make the music and work as hard as you can to get it out there.

I’m kind of like a folk singer mixed with soul, but I feel like if you really are a lover of hip-hop music, make the beat banging as possible and then put the message in so that people get the honey with the medicine.

In this era, soul is not a sound or a color: it’s an intention.

I always have something by Stevie Wonder in my CD player.

‘Open Door’ was a world music project and bilingual. It was in Hebrew and English, and it’s great. I do think it’s really beautiful. But it’s very emotional and very dark – in a good way.

Music lives in my mother – she’s played in bands in Detroit and toured and did the whole thing. So I have somebody who’s done it all to just talk to. And we write songs together.

I do believe in prophecy.

If I were not a black artist but I was still singing, playing guitar, and singing ballads that are spiritual and cerebral, I’d be easier to market because people accept that from white female singer-songwriters faster.

Neo-soul is really less about a sound than it is about a look, in my opinion.