“But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.”

“As Erykah Badu, it has nothing to do with me, the way I look, my hair wrap, my style, it's about you and what you feel for my music. If I can make you feel like the way that people who influenced me made me feel, that's completion.”

“What I work hard at doing is staying on a path of being kind and showing and proving that I'm a good person to society. That's hard. The talent, that's a gift. I just came here like that.”

“No one chooses to raise children alone.”

“When you're in a relationship you want it to work. My parents did, I did. But we are not taught how to make it work.”

“Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.”

“I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian.”

“Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.”

“What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another.”

“I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.”

“I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.”