Alicia Keys

How incredible our ancestors were. The first astrophysicists, scientists, physicians, mathematicians, architects, creators of so much of the world as we know it. It’s a blessing to know what cloth you’re cut from!

I never thought love could be so deep, so wide, so open, so full, so elevating! Such a teacher! Thank you for teaching me, growing me, deepening me!!

It’s my nature to downplay.

A great song can pull me out of a slump and lighten my heart.

I’ve come into loving and understanding the feminine side of me. How powerful a woman and her femininity is… how strong, how graceful, how gorgeous, how beautiful. I love getting to know the many sides of myself. I embrace them all.

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.

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing very powerful emotions. That’s what draws people towards it.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Musicians need to continue higher learning try to expand the pallet.

For years the trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We starved.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

You’ve got to be willing to put stuff on the line, otherwise it doesn’t have much meaning.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

Never play anything the same way twice.

You don’t chose your inspirations, they chose you.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.

Jazz can only enhance the Classical side and Classical can only enhance the Jazz side.