Quotes About Expression

England is so black and white, so plain, like a burger with nothing on it. No salad, nothing. That's why it's so real.

Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a Black artist with White skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul.

If I were not a black artist but I was still singing, playing guitar, and singing ballads that are spiritual and cerebral, I'd be easier to market because people accept that from white female singer-songwriters faster.

Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now, but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application.

Music, in its true essence, has got no language. You don't listen to anybody because he is black or white or because he belongs to a particular geographical region. You listen to him because you like what he does.

We were from downtown, so we were rapping in Danceteria, in these white downtown clubs, really. Nobody downtown was rapping. Nobody we knew was rapping. So we were like, 'We should do it.' We weren't making fun of it; we loved it, and we wanted to be part of it.

It was 100 percent music. There was no ego involved, no attitudes, no black and white, it was pure music.

I like doing stuff like, for instance, in the 'Leave the Night On' video, I had on a plain white T-shirt. I just wanted to do something to it to make it a little different, so I just cut a big strip out of the side, from the shirttail up to my armpit, and cut a big red strip out of another T-shirt and just sewed it in there.

The only thing that's really riled me up in the last ten years has been the White Stripes. That's the one band that's gotten me competitive, and that's good.

I can't take any more white boys noodling around on their guitars.

If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,'

I feel like I don't hit the radio button ever - or not enough, even on the good stuff. I do shout some stuff when I'm mad at myself, but I'm pretty good about not hitting the radio button.

I do think that I'm not good at making pretty things. It doesn't come so naturally for me.

My parents were artists, so my salvation was to make pretty things - and ultimately delicious things at the same time.

The R&B will always prevail. It will always last. The blues will always last.

'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money.

In my previous life, I was an artist. I still paint. I love art.

I do films that I like. I have done comedy, romance, everything, and I always like to do it differently from the previous ones.

The idea for 'Midnight Moonlight' was mostly inspired by the moon herself. Advancing from my previous EP 'Moon Shoes,' I felt it necessary to dig a little deeper into who I am and the relationship between my music and the moon.

Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.

I had always attended classes and written stories as a creative outlet because I need that, and I thought, in my previous career in a model, the way I approached that was that I believed I was telling a non-verbal story.

Art should be able to be innovative without compromising itself. That's why I believe artists should have bigger preoccupations than checking the price tags on their work or becoming curators' darlings.

I'm a crusader. I really believe in the First Amendment, and I use it fully, and I pay a price for that.

Avoid miscommunication. The price you pay for it is horrendous.