Alicia Keys

In the 80s, when I was a little girl, this whole Midtown area was a different world. These are the streets that I walked, and learned my lessons on, and heard the music, and witnessed disenfranchised people, and people who just had dreams and hopes. Every pimp, every prostitute, every drug dealer, every Broadway dreamer wishing they could be a writer, or a musician, or an actor.

I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.

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

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.

I love learning about different religions, and discovering the different ways to worship, and to love the greatness and the higher being that surrounds us all. I definitely believe in a bigger presence, and I really respect all religions; at their core they all teach the same message – community and kindness and looking out for each other.

Today is a king in disguise.

It doesn’t matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

Our strength grows out of our weakness.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

Fueling your body is a process… The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we’re so fond of it.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.