Quotes from India Arie

In my opinion, you just have to make the music. Make the music and work as hard as you can to get it out there.

Music lives in my mother - she's played in bands in Detroit and toured and did the whole thing. So I have somebody who's done it all to just talk to. And we write songs together.

In this era, soul is not a sound or a color: it's an intention.

I loved her music and the fact that she was a classically trained pianist and that her voice was so unique, but what made Nina Simone my hero is that I had never seen anyone in the public eye who looked anything like me at all, ever.

Joe Sample was one of my heroes. I met him at the Curacao Jazz festival, and I fanned out like he was the Beatles!

Just to keep myself balanced, I do things like yoga and meditation.

Everything in my music has always been emotionally and spiritually motivated... But after I started doing yoga, the place where I came from changed drastically.

When it comes down to the song writing, I'm just very slow - very slow. Because the songs are about my life, so I'm doing emotional work on myself.

So many people have been abused. It's not rare; it's a very common human experience, and we survive.

I'm really judgmental, especially about things that I feel make my life harder.

Everybody has a spiritual body. Everybody has a physical body, and so your spiritual body is the stuff that holds all of your emotions like your body holds your organs, your food, your muscles, your water. Your spiritual body holds your emotional state and your mental state.

Listening to 'Songs in the Key of Life' always puts me in a good mood.

Neo-soul is really less about a sound than it is about a look, in my opinion.

By all of your beauty I am so inspired. Your love has baptized me by fire.

I'm kind of like a folk singer mixed with soul, but I feel like if you really are a lover of hip-hop music, make the beat banging as possible and then put the message in so that people get the honey with the medicine.

At 16, I started really loving country music, and Collin Raye just had the most amazing ballads!

This celebrity culture that hypnotizes people into thinking a person is literally not real because you see them on television is a spell the watcher him- or herself must break.

I know the things I say go out of my own mouth and into my own ears.

I was born in love with music. My mother is a singer. Many of my aunts and uncles on my mother's side are musical. My grandparents sang and played blues piano. It's literally in my blood.

To spread love, healing, peace, and joy is my mission in life - and so I speak up.

Just like the air you breathe or the water you drink, music shapes you. The trouble is, most people don't use it to spread love and healing. But I think music can make a social contribution if you're responsible with it.

It's important to have a place where you can recharge. Everybody's is different, but I do think it should entail quiet because it needs to be where you hear your spirit most clearly. For me, that's the prayer room in my apartment. And since my home is 700 square feet, I mean the coat closet near the front door.

For me, the healing process starts with graciousness and forgiveness.

What I love about Christmas music is it stays around every year and comes back.