I write to find out about how the world sings.

If you're doing something new there is always a sense of fear or foreboding, but you're in new ground and you have to get out your machete and cut a new path.

I feel like music is oceanic - there's no end to what you can discover.

The people who are going into music who hunger, they're going into pop music. There are some badass women who are ambitious and hungry and brave, and they're in pop.

I'd been trained as a classical musician, but also as a pop musician. My teacher made sure that everything was available.

My daughter is my greatest gift and, not to be corny, but my greatest teacher.

I have never relied on anyone else for money since I graduated, and that made me feel grown up.

My early life was full of music because my sisters played the piano and I started playing at three.

I think there are some things in music that work and don't work. That's learned from counterpoint and rhythm and theory, and they don't work if you don't want them to work.

Life is funny...we never know what's in store us and time brings on what is meant to be.

But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.

Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction.

You can never take your reputation back. There really is nothing as powerful as a good reputation.

Halloween's coming. Kids get very imaginative in my neighborhood. Last year, three kids showed up as Goldman Sachs executives and demanded 4.5 billion pieces of candy.

I believe there's only one autobiography you can do.

I always have shoe trouble.

People know I'm smart. And people know that, whether it's SNL or Jimmy Kimmel, it's a trend to take the piss out of celebrity -- just as much of a trend as wearing a gray hoodie or driving a Prius.

It is clear that history differs from the other disciplines in having an approach and not an area of its own.

Passion does not compensate for ignorance.