India Arie Quotes

If there is any sense of order to the universe, acting is what I am meant to do. I'm not manufactured. I know acting isn't real, that it's temporary. If there is any theme to the roles I play, it is emotional vulnerability and availability.

For me, the most effective cabaret evenings have been some of the most personal ones, where the performer is comfortable enough to simply be themselves.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

I'm always curious about anyone who has enough passion to go onstage and say, 'This is what I'm really passionate about.' It's always worth listening to.

I love watching people tell stories, because it's very vulnerable.

I just know what I go through, and I know how to speak on it in an interesting way.

Standup is essentially part of your personality with the volume turned up.

I just know that when I go onstage, I give everything I have, not only my feet, not only my legs, not only my body. I try to tell a story. Sometimes I am able to cry because I feel like it. Sometimes I am able to love because I feel like it.

I think early on I avoided singing because it was so personal and I didn't know how to sit in that intimacy. I wrote songs when I was little and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.

Go out on the stage as a human being and do not be afraid to show struggle in your music. It's a struggle in life and then struggle and then victory.

If you're up on a stage, naked and solo and singing songs to people, there's not much place to hide, so you may as well confess what you want to confess and say what you want to say, whatever that is. Some songs just turn out as being more about me, and some are more through the eyes of other people, or third-person descriptions of people.

Onstage, you can be anything you want to be. In concert, I might project a different side of myself, but I wouldn't do anything I'd be embarrassed of.

What's the point of a song if you can't be honest?

For me, it's always this constant battle and search when I'm out on stage as to where and when do I really open myself up to the people that are there. How do I let myself feel present in the space, and how do I allow myself to get into the music and interact with the band members.

I am not an actor. Yes, every so often I appear on talk shows to promote something I've written, and I enjoy doing so because I have a lot of stories to tell, and I like making audiences laugh. But that's not acting. That's just me being me.

I think most of my songs are based on an emotion and in every song I write, there's at least a partial truth.

I've given myself permission to say whatever's on my mind when I'm on stage.

Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.

I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.

I really am an open book. I don't keep anything in at all, which is good and bad.

The songs come from a vulnerable place, but expressing that part of yourself can also make you feel fearless.

The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.

At school, people would say I should go on 'Britain's Got Talent,' but I would never have done that because it doesn't seem genuine; it doesn't feel natural.

I've been the type of guy, I've always been very forthcoming with how I feel. And that it doesn't make you less of a man to like go and be like, 'This is how I feel about you. This is the truth.'

I think from a very young age I always have this desire to perform.