I don't know if it's due to my age, that I'm older now, [but] I love the essentials. I don't like the things around us that are a kind of mirage.

We need self-confidence in our ability to build Africa. I trust in Mali and I trust in music.

You just have to try before thinking that you can't.

There are some things around us that are not actually useful. I didn't know that before. It's very new for me to understand. That became my way of writing: I can see also the new myself.

It's a great experience just to understand that finally being well known is not the most important thing.

The interesting thing for me is to put together all my influences and all my experiences I got through my traveling with my father.

When you are able to make a living with your job as an artist, that means you have an audience and you have to thank this audience.

Sometimes there are painters or very famous artists who start to become artists after they are dead because an audience or a public know about their art after they die.

When you have a chance to be an artist with an audience in your lifetime, you have to say thanks to your audience. That's a great thing. That's the best thing that can happen to an artist.

You can be a star here in Europe and not be known at all in the United States.

American audiences don't react in the same way as European ones to African music because, I think, Europeans listen to this music through all the festivals that exist here.

You think you walk, Lucy? I think you fly. You see yourself in a uniform? I see you in a cape. You're a hero, of the quietest but most genuine nature.

The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.

Love, above all things, is a commitment to your choice.

Failure is that early morning hour of darkness which precedes the dawning of the day of success.

I'm not in favor of just taking short-term isolated situations and depleting our resources to keep our climate just the way it is today.

It is not whether your words or actions are tough or gentle; it is the spirit behind your actions and words that announces your inner state.

I was raised to understand and know the difference between right and wrong.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

One can't be angry when one looks at a penguin.

As I get older, I 've shied away from a lot of convention. I've just been making my records.