I'm pretty much always planning two albums ahead.

All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.

I don't get writer's block. I don't try to write anything; when something comes, I write it. I just practice and when I get an idea I write it down.

I really like the complexity of jazz, the emotional depth; I feel like there's no other music that's really as satisfying as jazz.

When I start working on a new album, I kind of stop listening to a lot of outside stuff just so I can kind of focus.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

[Billie Holiday] was keeping it super real, and you can feel that to this day. Everything that she sang, she believed in. So I had to pick songs that I felt the same about.

For me, the difference between a musician reading an arrangement on a piece of paper, and them closing their eyes and listening to what's happening around them and responding to it, is huge.

When I sort of step in my jazz world, it's somewhere between instrumental jazz and vocal jazz.

Kind of the sad thing is that - it's still true - a lot of jazz people just listen to jazz, and a lot of hip-hop people just listen to hip-hop, and there's not a lot of crossover, unfortunately.

Powerful women always interpret hostility as unrequited love.

We’ve all got voices inside our heads and over time they blend into a mental orchestra that all sounds the same. This is where we assume every voice we hear is our own even though that is not true.

Of course [I'm a feminist]. And everyone I know is a feminist.

Going to parties usually makes me feel depressed, just because I have such social fear after meeting people.

I have a hard time watching people getting punched on screen; I have to close my eyes a lot.

I just want to have fun and party with everyone around the world. That's the only rule, to have fun.

I think if Jesus came for the first time, and he was 33 1/2 years old and hung out with these guys, where would he be? They'd probably be at a coffee bar getting a latte or something.

Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.

We old roosters must be cautious. Don't try to outwit your arteries.

If you wear Arab things, wear the best. Clothes are significant among the tribes, and you must wear the appropriate, and appear at ease in them. Dress like a Sherif, if they agree to it.