Esperanza Spalding Quotes

My movies are personal notes of my whole life.

When I do my collection, it is in a way my own story.

There's really no differentiation between the work I make and the world I live in.

If something is going on in my life, it winds up getting into my strip.

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

My films are always a reflection of where I am in my life.

Finally, everything that has been part of my life, whether I wanted it to or not, has expressed itself in my dresses.

I always write my music based on what is going on in my life at the time.

I think a valid approach to being a musician is to take all of the experience of your life and filter it through your personality and send it back out there, and that's what art is.

My whole life, I've always had to be surrounded by creative things. I find it relaxing to be in touch with creations by other people.

People choose whatever projects they've seen that I've done over the years, and whichever one is their favorite is the only one they care about. But I realized that none of those were my voice or representative of what my thoughts and feelings were.

Every album I've made is about what I'm experiencing at the time.

My music has been inspired by true events in my life.

Art is a direct reflection of the life you live. What you experience comes out in your work.

I write about everything that happens in my life, whether or not the songs actually are released or not.

For a while there, our writing got really edgy... I've always written about experiences, so when your life gets a bit crazy, you start to write songs that are a bit edgy.

All the great artists illustrate their approach to life in the work they make.

When you write, what's going on in your life shines through in the songs.

My poems - like my family life, my life with friends, my teaching - these things express who I am. I don't feel any extra responsibilities or relishes or necessary evils in them. They are part of who I am, with all of those customary desires and doubts, purposes and confusions that come along with being a particular person.

Through my films I'm eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don't know if I'm ever going to get there, but I'm slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I'm 85, I'll look back and say, 'All right, that about sums it up.'

Stand-up is my foundation. That's where it started at. And I love it because it's personal. It's mine. It's all me. It's my experience in life.

I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.

I look at the artistic process as like experiencing the world, channeling it through your personality and sending it back out there. That's the process.

I have long begged off the question of my albums reflecting where I am 'at' personally. There is more inaccuracy in that approach than accuracy.

Years of my life were lived knowing that I'd get a book out of them one day.