India Arie Quotes

Yes, all my songs come from personal experience and relationships.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It's a natural process.

I used to say it was painful to write lyrics about myself and looking inward.

'Sally' is just a song that I wrote talking to my alter ego. When I write, I don't really consciously say, 'This is what I've been going through in my life, and I'm gonna put this into words.' It's just a song that I kinda went in and did. Then, listening back to it, I realized, 'I'm talking to myself.'

I've really taken time to dive into my heart and my emotions a little more. I think, before, I was a little nervous to open up that box and go, 'What's in there,' you know? Now, that's what's made the best music, and that's what I've been able to pull out of parts of myself that I never knew existed.

I have never dissected my personal life. What sense would it make?

There are parts of me that I keep secret even from myself. I have demons and I'd love to be able to healthily look at the demons and still be a wonderful actor and not feel I need them to create.

A writer needs a life of introspection.

Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

When I hear the songs 'Dangerous' or 'End of My World', I go, 'Wow, I didn't even know I could go that low!' And when I played them for my family, they said, 'That doesn't even sound like you.'

There's always going to be life experiences that find their way into my songs.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.

I make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it's a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.

Yeah, it is, because it's a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That's what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost.

Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

All of my books come from something that I happen to be working out at a given point in my life. It's kind of self-therapy.

I don't choose characters with the intention of working something out in my personal life.

Emotional messiness is my reason for life. In acting, it's so important.

I'm glad I chose more vulnerable work about what is love and what is freedom and those kinds of things. But there's something innate in me where I always come back to characters with an edge.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

All my songs are based on personal experience, and 'Lost Without You' came out fully born.

A lot of my music is inspired by personal situations in my life.

A lot of my songs are about things that concern me personally, not a heightened version of myself or any of the characters that I play.