Alicia Keys

I feel like it’s by design that I’m raising boys, like there’s a reason. I don’t like my sons watching Snow White. It’s totally misogynistic

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

I want my sons to grow up in a world where they’d never think boys are better than girls or that black is better than white.

My first instinct is great pride for all of us as women who are finding our voices.

What I learned the most from Prince was putting art first, being creatively ambitious, and putting creativity at the forefront of what I do.

The way I define beauty is individuality and wisdom, which I think creates a certain inner confidence. And not confidence in a way that’s only on the surface, but a deep-down knowing of yourself or settling into who you are.

Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others is the ultimate source of success in life.

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.

It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.

I’m the fifth generation of Seventh Day Adventists and the youngest of four brothers. When I was still very small, we formed a gospel quartet.

Let go over a cliff, die completely, and then come back to life – after that you cannot be deceived.

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.

Our God is a forgiving God.

Before enlightnment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightnment, chop wood, carry water.