Quotes from Esperanza Spalding

There's enough time in the day: If you go to bed at 10 and start your day at 6, there's a lot you can do in a day!

It's about process, the process of growth. It seems to me in my own life - and other minds throughout history have also observed this phenomenon - that growth seems to move in two directions at the same time.

I grew up with an incredibly loving and supportive family that gave me the impression there were a lot of options for me out there.

The benefit of the radio is, something beyond your realm of knowledge can surprise you, can enter your realm of knowledge.

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

Your sanity is harder to get back than money or contacts. You are the magic. You are the art. You can't lose that.

When I was a kid, I was really curious about acting. And I was interested in movement and dance. I wasn't good at either of those things - I didn't work at those things.

There's nothing wrong with struggle. Anytime I look back at a difficult phase of my life and see what grew out of it - the creative survival tactics - I think that the good is way better than the bad.

You don't have to be fearless to do anything; you can be scared out of your mind. I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a 'jazz musician' - it's a big responsibility.

I just think music is so intrinsically linked with images in the culture that we live in that you'll be hard-pressed to have an experience with the music without a preconceived notion.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

I never think my music isn't easy until I got to teach it to other people.

I put my mother through a lot when I was a teenager. I used to lie a lot. Now, we talk all the time.

When something in art or music piques my interest, I tend to go check it out, and most things I check out, I'm not very good at. But a few things I've gone to check out have given me back as much love as I gave them, usually much more.

I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized.

There's the juiciest music that makes me so happy, music that I need on that deserted island when I'm stranded for the rest of my life, and nobody cares that it's there.

Anything I do has to have integrity, so if you just want to make music, it's not difficult finding support. The hard part for a publicist or manager is making a star.

For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution.

I love Aretha Franklin, Edith Piaf, Blondie.

I don't watch TV, I don't spend time on the Internet, and I don't party much. I don't text very much, either.

I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.

As you go back or move toward insights/ideas/events/words/lessons/mistakes in the past, you develop into the future from the present. I think that's pretty cool that two quote-unquote opposites are intrinsically linked. That whole theme of opposites being two sides of the same whole is a theme that's always been intriguing to me.

Up-and-coming musicians can easily reach out and find a loving teacher, and that's definitely what happened to me.