Meshell Ndegeocello Quotes & Sayings

“I'm always tryin' to do something new, tryin' to look like a beginner.”

“Once you encounter people who are really testing the limits of kindness, that's when you start to build up a shield and close yourself down.”

“Children are born with their own optimism. They have a clarity and a simplicity that we can only wish for.”

“It's hard being bisexual, omnisexual, multisexual, whatever you want to call it, when people have their agenda and expect you to just represent their agenda.”

“We're all just bags of bones and muscle and hormones; I'll never understand what makes our minds do the things we do. It's like that statue of the monkey holding a skull. We're trying to use a thing we don't understand to understand ourselves.”

“Music is my only guide. I don't care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn't give a hoot about what the purists said.”

“I think secretly I've realized after my time on the planet that I have no control over what people feel about me or need from me, so I just have a more laid-back approach in my apologies.”

“My greatest influence is Jimi Hendrix, and if he's been reincarnated, or if he's looking down, sideways, or looking up, I just wanted to tell him that I love him and thank him for opening doors for me. I just wanted to make it beautiful for him.”

“My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.”

“My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.”