Alicia Keys

I feel like….Music is the – it’s the answer. It’s the reason.

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.

Until we’re in those rooms as equally as men are, it can’t shift.

We are a gorgeous, infinite circle of women all shades, all styles, in all the ways we were made. Inside of us everything blooms.

I’m taking more time to listen to myself. It’s allowed me to be an aggressive bad ass, calling it as I see it

I’m meant to be an artist who can stand on my own. That’s my place; that’s what I’m supposed to do.

Maybe that’s all that family really is, a group of people who all miss the same imaginary place.

Your children can be around you all day, but if you don’t spend quality time with them and you don’t pay attention to them and talk to them and listen to them, it doesn’t matter that they’re just around you.

I believed in raising my children as I had been raised.

My father was a perfectionist. We had to hop to everything and have marvelous table manners. I could only wear navy blue and gray and white. He wanted me to be interested in tennis and horses just like a little princess, but I couldn’t stand such things.

A few years after my first son was born, he wanted to know how we chose his name, so I began reading him the story of Noah’s Ark.

What will your children be teaching your grandchildren?

You know, it’s the silliness in me. It has always been there. I love to make people laugh. It comes from my family. My family is funny.

Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero.

They say that no matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood.

My father would always praise me. He always thought I was the smartest person

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

Having a sister is like having a best friend you can’t get rid of. You know whatever you do, they’ll still be there.

[On his mother’s adversity] She had a very difficult beginning… All of my mothers family were killed… and she came to America at the time of the depression. It was not an easy life at all.

I know what it’s like to be married and to live in a house with a garden, but it’s not something I’m striving for at the moment.

I owe much to mother. She had an expert’s understanding, but also approached art emotionally.