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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Why not be a person who is loving towards humankind as a whole and people as individuals?

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

It's important to have a place where you can recharge. Everybody's is different, but I do think it should entail quiet because it needs to be where you hear your spirit most clearly. For me, that's the prayer room in my apartment. And since my home is 700 square feet, I mean the coat closet near the front door.

Denying any person their humanity is a game we should all stop playing.

For me, the healing process starts with graciousness and forgiveness.

When someone is themselves through their music, it's soul music. James Taylor is soul music to me 'cause it's just him talking about him. It doesn't have anything to do with black or growing up in the church; it's where it comes from. It's just soul music.

I'm really judgmental, especially about things that I feel make my life harder.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

You deal with what comes to you. If it's something you don't like, you deal with it the best you can. If it's something that you love, you rise to the occasion.

When I perform, I'm just very much just being myself.

In Denver, all we really had was pop radio, so I grew up on all that late '70s pop stuff - Billy Joel, James Taylor, Lionel Richie, Elton John, Steve Miller and Toto. Great love songs and really hooky and melodic music - I have all of that stuff in my heart.

I always loved music, but I didn't know if I could be the kind of artist that makes a difference.

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.

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

It was challenging getting myself into the mindset to lose the weight. Once I got there, the weight dropped off quickly.

Everything in my music has always been emotionally and spiritually motivated... But after I started doing yoga, the place where I came from changed drastically.

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 like Brandy a lot. She's a vocal prodigy.

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.

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.

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

Nina Simone sacrificed so much to be as bold as she was about being black and about being female in an era where that could have cost her life.

'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.

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.

Your soul is between you and God.

I always pray when I write songs that my spirit guides, or whoever is with me, inspiring me, would let me speak the truth.

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.

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 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.

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

I know that I pray a lot, and I take time for myself.

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

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

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

I loved her music and the fact that she was a classically trained pianist and that her voice was so unique, but what made Nina Simone my hero is that I had never seen anyone in the public eye who looked anything like me at all, ever.

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.

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