Alicia Keys

In the 1990s, with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, those really big female artists were very glamorous, it was all about the glamour at that time. And so there was a big switch, the desire to be more who you were, not so beholden to this whole standard of beauty. It was a liberation. You see Mary J Blige – she did the same, wearing the combat boots.

The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.

I feel the presence of a higher power. I believe that what you give is what you get. It’s universal law. I believe in the power of prayer and of words. I’ve learned that when you predict that negative things will happen, they do.

As I grow and I get older I’m realising more and more that there’s such a beautiful, sensual power that we have as women.

It’s my nature to downplay.

On my album Here, that’s the first time that I’ve really understood how I could put all the things that were happening in the world and in my life and in our lives as just human beings into one body that was just so powerful and really had a perspective. That was an opening for me and I think that naturally, there is just so much to talk about. I don’t see me getting quiet anytime soon.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the later. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.

I do respect them; I have great respect for women. In fact, one of the reasons ‘The Apprentice’ was such a successful show for so many years, the audience of women was fantastic.

I think it’s a wonderful time for a woman.

Women feel more guilt than men, not because of some weird chromosomal issue but because they have a history of being blamed for other people’s behavior. You get hit, you must have annoyed someone; you get raped, you must have excited someone; your kid is a junkie, you must have brought them up wrong.

I feel there are certain people who are systematically ripping (feminism) down because of their lack of regard and their ignorance about what the women before us had to go through.

It’s about being alive and feisty and not sitting down and shutting up. Even if people would like you to.

There’s something so special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer.

The argument that ‘boys will be boys’ actually carries the profoundly anti-male implication that we should expect bad behaviors from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately, or treating girls and women with respect.

I’m not a feminist. If men were going through the things women are going through today, I would be fighting for them with just as much passion. I believe in equality.

Being a feminist is being equal to what a man do

Women are not a special interest group. They are half of this country and they are perfectly capable of making their own choices about their health.

First of all, as a card-carrying feminist, I am a BIG feminist, anytime I see women being stars – the stars that they should be, and being featured, and being highlighted, it makes my heart happy. Because it’s long overdue.

I never identified with the feminist movement in a strong way. I just kind of lived it. I didn’t politicize it. I didn’t follow any written rules to what it meant to be a feminist. I had my own sense of what was right and wrong.

What sometimes is missing for young girls is that so early in our lives we’re shushed. And not just directly shushed. Sometimes we’re treated a little too preciously. They treat us like a doll. They don’t treat us like real beings, equal partners. I was loved early by my father, but I was never so precious that he didn’t think I could be there at the table.

Strong men, men who are truly role models, don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful.