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...

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

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.

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

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...

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.

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

Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind

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

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.

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 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...

God looks out for fools and babies.

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

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

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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

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...

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

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 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...

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

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.

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...

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

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.