When I stop asking questions, something's wrong.

I think that's the role of an artist, right? To touch someone and make us stretch out just a little bit more.

In an abusive relationship - we'll talk about men and women - women are often restrained, by words or out of fear, from leaving. They will tolerate abuse up to and including being put to death.

I just kind of tried to stay true to myself.

I just love music. I love all kinds of music, and I was exposed to it, me and my siblings, from the time we were in utero.

Once I started singing, I realized it was a language I'd forgotten I could speak.

To be up on stage and interacting with musicians, that was a huge epiphany for me.

Hey, maybe I can sing locally and earn a couple of bucks.

I've never been the type of singer that can sing in heels and the gown and all this stuff, because I can't get to where I want to go while I'm in that getup.

You have to be willing to look a certain way, and hold your body a certain way, until you get to where you want to go - I'm talking about musically, now.

There's a certain place you want to get to, and in order to do that, you have to be vulnerable.

Never rely upon a time machine to fix your problems, as everyone knows, they're much too faulty.

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

Poetry, especially traditional Iranian poetry, is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously.

As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.

Often, what you see in the media is driven by economic forces.

Don't miss out on today by living in yesterday.

I don't like my whole life dragged out. I don't want anyone to know about me, because I don't think I'm very interesting... I like my work. I like what I gave. And that was it.

There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.

One day I saw with the eyes of my eternity in bliss and without effort, a stone. It tasted sweet, like heavenly herbs.

Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards.