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Quote by Janelle Monae

“I always feel the need to give the unfiltered truth, (or) what I think is the truth, at least.”

Quote by Janelle Monae

Author

Janelle Monáe is an American singer, songwriter, and actress, born on December 1, 1985. Known for her unique musical style and diverse artistic expression, she blends elements of pop, soul, R&B, and electronic music. Monáe has achieved significant success in both the music and fashion industries with her musical talent and fashion sense. more

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“I'm not a politician; I'm an artist. So I always feel the need to give the unfiltered truth, (or) what I think is the truth, at least.”

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“I always feel a bit trapped when a painting goes for millions of pounds and only one person can have it. If you can have that as well as a poster on every student's wall, then you're in a very enviable position. I'd like to do a Damien Hirst for £500 at some point.”

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“First, before I'm an artist, before I'm a celebrity, I'm a human being.”

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“The secret of understanding poetry is to hear poetry's words as what they are: the full self's most intimate speech, half waking, half dream. You listen to a poem as you might listen to someone you love who tells you their truest day. Their words might weep, joke, whirl, leap. What's unspoken in the words will still be heard. It's also the way we listen to music: You don't look for extractable meaning, but to be moved.”

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“A poem makes clear without making simple. Poetry's language carries what lives outside language. It's as if you were given a 5-gallon bucket with 10 gallons of water in it. Mysterious thirsts are answered. That alchemical bucket carries secrets also, even the ones we keep from ourselves.”

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“I think if people genuinely want to help ... that'll shine through, no matter what color or what race. We cannot see race before compassion.”

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“I require silence to write the way an apple tree requires winter to make fruit. Being with people is intimate and joyous, but at some point, I'll wander off by myself. The paradox is that what began in childhood as an act of necessary solitude has led me straight to a life with others, in which I fly to China or Lithuania or northern Minnesota to read my poems and talk with other people who love language made into a lathe on which a life can be tuned and be turned.”

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“Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's large. Step into the ocean or walk on Mount Tamalpais, and that kind of amnesia and self-centeredness isn't possible. Enter the natural world at all, you see existence emerge, ripen, fall and continue, and you can't help but feel more tender towards self and others. That summoning into the large and the shared is what poems exist also to do.”

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“I don't work on poems and essays at once. They walk on different legs, speak with different tongues, draw from different parts of the psyche. Their paces are also different.”

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“A poem's essential discovery can happen at a single sitting. The cascade of discoveries in an essay, or even finding a question worth exploring in one, seems to need roughly the time it takes to plant and harvest a crop of bush beans.”

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