Meshell Ndegeocello quotes:

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm becoming more and more apolitical - I think the most revolutionary thing you can do is just live your life and have a good time. Before they scoop you up on the street or you die.

I'm a true believer that unless you're Prince or Stevie Wonder - and even Prince is showing that he needs help - not everybody can produce themselves. I'm definitely not that person.

I joke that a person of color would never make a movie like 'Midnight in Paris.' Nostalgia isn't so enticing.

I find myself wanting to make music at the dining room table or in the bedroom - I'm kind of a mobile writer, so I sort of move around the house. But the attic is definitely where I can make the most noise. While everyone on the lower floors screams 'Earthquake!' But no! It's just my bass!

I'm pushing ahead on my own - you no longer need a large record company to make you a star.

Sometimes people ask what it was like when I got to meet Mick Jagger, and I must admit that you just try and chill out and be your best self around anyone that you meet.

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.

I stopped beating up on myself. I stopped asking myself why I didn't sell this number of records, why I don't have corporate sponsorship. I just don't buy into any of that anymore.

Not to be a Bible-thumper, but there really is nothing new under the sun.

Allow the artist to finish the piece of work before you critique it.

I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.

Yes, violence begets more violence, but historically this has been the way of the world.

Definitely dub is in my body forever. I think I hear everything through a dub filter. Even when I play rock music, I play through a dub filter.

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.

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.

Any ideas of 'other' are complicated, and otherness is relative to personal ideas of 'normal.

It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.

You make a choice to make music or be an actor, and people automatically think they can have access to your life.

Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind

I just try to tell a story with a song, and be able to try to transmit the emotion to you. That's all I'm really trying to do.

God looks out for fools and babies.

Any ideas of 'other' are complicated, and otherness is relative to personal ideas of 'normal.'

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.

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

I am here no longer just a vision birthed into this body I accept my praise, my blame, my joy, my sorrow I realize we are, in truth, the truth we seek God, perfect this very moment.

I feel that musicians are in a fellowship, and that fellowship is a responsibility.

I love children. I'd prefer to be around children much more than adults, actually. And I like animals, too. I'm just really into beings who are at ease with themselves.

I think all musicians should understand that you have chosen not to be a soldier but a musician.

I think leaders are incapable of the strength that passive resistance entails.

I tried to be as positive as possible, because I have the same birthday as Michael Jackson. He is my cosmic brother. I love him.

If I would not be able to create music, I would create art or something else. Perhaps cooking.

I'm really good at melodic and sonic things, but I don't really think I have anything to say. But I really enjoy the puzzle-making of taking words and adding a melody to them.

It's funny, I think after you are a star like Sting and you no longer think you need any guidance or aid - it would be great to see those stars work with other songwriters.

It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.

Looking at the media today, I'm quite ashamed of myself, of things I've participated in. Everything is marketed to sex and gossip and it's just a shame that those are the things at the forefront, on people's minds, those are the things that make you popular, what you have on or how little you have on and it has nothing to do with music, nothing to do with sports it has nothing to do with the things so many communities put their faith in. It's just a sad place to be.

Madonna is interesting. She changed music. She definitely did. She gave me an opportunity that no one else would give me, so I am very grateful to her.

Music is like a lover that I can't commit to, but I seem to always find myself in bed with.

My legacy is in my family, not in my work. For me. I don't know about for other people. I try to forget a lot.

No one knows anything for sure.

Our leaders and Osama Bin Laden all claim to do the right thing in the name of God. I question that. I wonder if that God is worth the life of another human-being.

The blowing thing is something that you either have a predilection for or not. And I don't have that thing. It was just unsanitary. I couldn't do it. I am a complete germaphobe.

There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?

Your government has problems...my government has problems. I can't be a judge. All I can do is be an ambassador of love. I'm a musician, not a soldier, and if I'm invited to a place in order to play and bring love, I'll always accept the invitation.

Your yes means nothing if you can't say no.