Meshell Ndegeocello famous quotes

Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Healing #Mind #Her Beauty

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Kindness #People #Shields

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Skulls #Mind #Trying

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Numbers #Asking #Records

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

#Music #Bed #Lovers

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

#Thinking #People #Choices

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!
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Moving #Earthquakes #House

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

#Violence #World #Way

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

#Sun

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

#Stars #Pushing #Needs

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

#Beginners #Looks #Something New

I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Documentaries #Watches #Information

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

#Thinking #Leader #Resistance

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Song #Trying #Able

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

#Color #Paris #Midnight

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Bisexual #People #Agendas

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Sports #Sex #Media

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Truth #Perfect #Joy

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Government #Israel #Order

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

#Artist #Pieces #Critique

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

#Ideas #Normal #Complicated

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

#Children #Optimism #Simplicity

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Thinking #Rocks #Play

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

#Song #Thinking #Suffering

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Beautiful #I Love Him #Opening Doors

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Song #Land #Knowing

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Father #Eye #Player

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Hero #People #Giving

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Dust #Black #Gone

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Song #Nice #Play

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Thinking #Live Your Life #Becoming

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Needs #Helping #Wonder

God looks out for fools and babies.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Baby #Fool #Looks

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Children #Animal #Ease

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.
-- Meshell Ndegeocello

#Apology #Thinking #People