Quotes from Erykah Badu

My favorite jewelry, it's just what I'm feeling at the time.

In music, it makes for a good platform to take time and really mold a piece the way I need to mold it. When it comes to fashion, I create a functional art that moves.

It's weird, but if I decide to do an album, then the ideas start fitting themselves together. I consider myself a nice, slow burn. Plus, it's not a race. And I have a lot to share.

From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.

I love being an entertainer - not really fond of being a celebrity.

The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.

Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.

But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.

I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian.

I planned my success. I knew it was going to happen.

When you're in a relationship you want it to work. My parents did, I did. But we are not taught how to make it work.

I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.

Music and the music business are two different things.

I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.

What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another.

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

No one chooses to raise children alone.

What I work hard at doing is staying on a path of being kind and showing and proving that I'm a good person to society. That's hard. The talent, that's a gift. I just came here like that.

I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison.

As Erykah Badu, it has nothing to do with me, the way I look, my hair wrap, my style, it's about you and what you feel for my music. If I can make you feel like the way that people who influenced me made me feel, that's completion.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It's fun to see what they'll say it is