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" By high school, I was putting the music for the services together and teaching Sunday school to everybody's kids. "

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" My father was very strict, a very militant parent, because he wanted us to be very focused kids. He sold the televisions, so we didn't watch TV. And he didn't want any music playing that wasn't gospel or inspirational music. In fact, he didn't even like a lot of gospel because he thought it was too bluesy. "

" For me, I just want to sing about life. And since I come from a spiritual background, I turned to jazz, because I feel it's still sacred, like gospel. It's serious music, but it allows room to sing about so much other stuff as well. "

" I studied opera for a year at Georgia State University, but I wasn't interested in that meticulous, technical approach to music. So I left school and went back to jazz. "

" I get bored very quickly. "

" The church is an institution of music and of production and performance, and it has to do with taking people to places inside of themselves and giving them an opportunity to sit deep in their own feelings, and to be together and deeply alone at the same time, and to process things. "

" I come from a family that has grown their own food from well into times of slavery, provided for themselves and people around them. So I found, through conversations about the earth and about the house with my neighbors, a lot of common ground. "

" At 16, I was going to church and playing music for church, and Dad would only pay for piano lessons so I could play at church. "

" I see 'Grace' as an affectionate refusal of things that just aren't true. With all our power and money and influence, we still can't raise up high over people's consciousness. "

" I'm a preacher's kid, I'm big-boned, I have giant feet, and I've always been able to run fast, and so I had this sense of, 'I can't fail. I'm invincible. I'm made of green juice and concrete; nothing's gonna happen to me.' "

" I have no ancestral link to the mountains. But I really do feel close to mountain culture. Their ways of food, of thinking. The way they hang out with no recording devices and just sing songs with each other. "

" Jazz has provided the framework for all the other stuff that I've done. "

" I know how to make myself comfortable. "

" Surrender is working with what happens. "

" I love songs that create moments that are very personal and that tell a story. "

" I'm so grateful for just the inherent mercy of life. "

" What I learned about singing in the church has gone into what I do now. "

" Where I come from, music is not a business. Sharing music is a business, but music is not a business. It comes from the people and belongs to the people. "

" Whoever is playing with me, they participate in the arrangement; I learned from Craig Street to really pool the stories and the skill and the voices of everybody around you on the bandstand to build an arrangement in the moment. "

" 'Salt' is like this snapshot in midair, an action shot. It's about my relationship with the church, the classical and choral music that I dealt with in school, and my new introduction to jazz. It's very hard for me to listen to from beginning to end, because I hear how lost I was. "

" I'm in love with the way that Ella Fitzgerald delivered a lyric. She would deliver a lyric with the kind of clarity that would make you wonder why it was written, and make you think about the writer. I think every writer hopes an Ella of any genre or anytime gets a hold of their work and works the song like that. "

" I think, as singers and performers, we are ambassadors of the human experience. I don't want to get bored just talking about myself. "

" I come from a lineage of ministers. "

" Salif Keita's one of my favorite artists. "

" There's a lot of pressure that comes from the mainstream stuff, and already people who have been saying - people who don't know any better - have been saying things to me like, 'You should really think about neosoul. You'd definitely be more successful in that.' But that's not my expression. "

" I never left jazz. The relationship between structure and improvisation - that constant conversation and tension - I've always wanted in every genre and song that I perform. "

" I'd been trained in choral, gospel, and a little bit of opera. "

" I always want to do good work and enjoy doing it. "

" As a southern woman, we often define ourselves by who we are with. But I wanted my life to be built differently. "

" If we work on it, we can absolutely refuse any notion that suggests that after generations of contributing to this country, being a part of the bones and the marrow, that I'm supposed to be uncomfortable here. "

" I don't think words always lead to meaning, but the things you can create with them are still pretty amazing. I've been really into Joni Mitchell, for example, but I've also been into some studio stuff, like Bjork. "