India Arie Quotes

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

I've never... when I was having songs on the airwaves, and that sort of thing, I never felt a sense of pressure anywhere except from myself, to do things the way I wanted to do them; to feel authentic; to feel like I was presenting my true self to the world.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I want to stay away from trends and do what we want to do musically.

I'm very selfish. I make music that I love because I only live once, and I'm an artist. I don't try to revolt against anybody, and I don't try to please anybody. I feel very strongly that I if love it, someone else will love it - not everybody, though.

I can only do music if I can do it the way I can do it.

My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job as far as I can see is to do the music that I want to do. All those other things are completely out of my control.

People tried to do a lot of stuff with me early in my career where they tried to shape me into one thing or another. They couldn't just take the chance and go with my vision - which was just my intuition, really.

I'm selfish, I think. I think an artist has to be. I'm not worried about what people think. I play the parts that I find interesting. It'd bother me more to be just pigeonholed into doing what people think is ethical or that's boring to me. I don't pick parts with that in mind, I just find interesting stories. If it's interesting to me, then I do it.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

I didn't think it was fair to my music to label me as the daughter of somebody - I didn't think it described me very well and I didn't think it had anything to do with my music.

I'm just an artist and I'm doin' what I like to do.

I make the kind of music I like.

Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.

There's no rule that says you have to make records constantly, like clockwork, to continue being who you are.

You know, we have our own audience, and it's not like - they just know we're not going to do certain things.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It's an individual-feel thing, you know?

It's great to get to make something in your own voice.

It was important that I got my own voice out there in the world. I'd used it on other people's films, collaborated, and I thought, 'You know, I can do this myself.' That was more important than anything else.

We've been able to have our cake and eat it, too. Every song, every T-shirt, is absolutely a pure expression of what we want to do. And it connects.

I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop, and my ambitions are different.

I love what I do and the music I make and the bands I've done, especially Fall Out Boy. I also love what I love, and I don't care if other people like it.

I have to be able to be the artist that I am.

The thing is, my life is a country song. I don't need to be manufactured, and I don't need anyone to tell me what to say or what to sing.