St. Lucia Quotes

You don't have to be a certain thing to be cool. If you're white, you don't have to act black or whatever. Just be you and know who you are.

My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am.

When I was in high school, I tried too hard to be cool and to impress people, but playing all these different characters has helped me find myself again.

Ironically, it was because I was raised as a Muslim in the South, that I realised the value in being true to who you really are. I've just got so many things going on inside. I don't know how to resolve all of them other than being true to who I am.

So many people go through life, and they never deal with their own issues, no matter what the issues are - ours happen to be gender identity. But, how many people go through life and just waste an entire life 'cause they'd never deal with themselves to be who they are.

Once I wrote 'Atmosphere,' I thought, 'This is my story; it's me and my life and what I've gone through to get to where I am.' I'm not the best singer, but still. All of my albums are personal, but putting myself out there and singing is one more thing that makes me vulnerable - one more thing that people can fire shots at.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

I had everything I'd hoped for, but I wasn't being myself. So I decided to be honest about who I was. It was strange: The people who loved me for being funny suddenly didn't like me for being... me.

I really don't know how to be anyone else, and whenever I try to be anyone else, I fail miserably. Or I disappoint myself. It doesn't build my self-esteem, and it doesn't help me grow me at all.

I've heard some people say that I'm selling out, but I'm not. If I hadn't done 'Black Radio', and just kept on doing just piano trio stuff, I wouldn't be honest with myself; I'd be doing it to please other people. That would be selling out.

Sometimes you feel awkward being what you're best at, you feel like you have to be something new.

The challenge is how strange and different my voice sounds, so I have tried to sound like other people and tried to be something I wasn't. I have tried to be a soul singer because someone else thought that a good idea. Not because I did.

I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out that I didn't want to fit.

Over a long period of time, living as if you were someone else is no fun.

I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.

I enjoy just being me. I don't need to be Queen Latifah, the brand, 24 hours a day.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

I think if I had seen more people like me who are out and proud, it wouldn't have taken me 45 years to say it - to walk in the truth.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

Be yourself. I had this three-week period where I wore this straw fedora. I thought it was what chicks wanted. And then it dawned on me that I was trying to be something that I wasn't, so I took the fedora off. So be yourself.

My music, I feel, has always been experimental, but it had got to a point where I felt disconnected from it completely. I didn't want to be a Clark Kent/Superman: I couldn't really say, 'Well, B.o.B's the old me, and Bobby Ray's the new me.' I had to just make a point.

I take my craft seriously, of course, but I don't feel the need to always play a certain character or a certain part or persona. I'm not going to cut something out of my life because it's not 'my image.' I want to be open enough that if I love something, I can do it, and it will add to myself as an entertainer.

Few things can frustrate us more than trying to make a person someone he or she isn't; we feel crazy when we try to pretend that person is someone he or she is not.

That was a real learning element for me, because I realized that the more true you are to yourself, the more you will lose people.

I was very, very thrown by the fact that I had to make some big changes in my life in order to be myself, but under this kind of movie-star banner.