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.

I've been in contact with music since I was four or five years old through my father, because of the interest he had in music and all his musical skills. I finally managed to make that my profession.

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

People wish for good dreams I wish people don't dream of me.

You CAN have your cake and eat it too. Just don't start choking.

It's a lot easier to lose than it is to win. It's easier, but it's not more comfortable.

We do not mature through age. We mature in awareness.

A natural parent has only two things principally to consider, the improvement of his son, and the finances to do it with.

I sometimes worry about my short attention span, but not for long.

Gun-related violence and murders are concentrated among blacks and Latinos in big cities.

It's such a trip how your body grows and changes, and at the end of the day, you have to wear what you are comfortable in and what you feel good in.

Freedom requires religion like a slug requires salt