Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Lizz Wright

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

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.

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'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.'

The truth is, when you want a great show, it's not 'entertaining' the audience - it's you sharing with them... an experience of communion.

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.

Where I fit genre-wise, it's hard to tell. It's a fickle wind. But I have to believe there's always going to be a place for the songs inside of me.

We had no television, and I only heard the radio when my parents went out to a Bible study group. They liked a quiet, meditative house.

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

I've begun to realize, as I'm getting older, that I was taught to go for a certain kind of stillness to get things done. I missed that in my life. I loved my grandmother's property, out in South Georgia right above the Florida line, so I just thought I'd find some property where I could feel that again.

I think of myself as an interpretative singer and a songwriter.

I am more prolific when I have something to respond to. I get my juice from people and real stories and things that seem common but are amazing.

My mom has a couple great tricks, but my father is consistently a good cook. He's extremely avid about health and fitness and a bit obsessive. He always talks about garden-fresh food.

I've always been genuinely interested in the spirit world. I've seen things I will never talk about because I'd be a fool to. You can't lay out that world in words.

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

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

So many great singers we know have come from the church.

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.

It's hard to know who you are until you're cracked open a little bit.

It's very hard for me to place myself alongside another artist. Everyone has something unique to express.

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

I'm a real Otis Redding fan, and I just think he sounds so good. He sounds like he's always at the end of a long day, and he just won't give up. I just love his wearied devotion - that beautiful, beautiful, weathered sound.

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.

Singing in church is a very different approach to music. It's very much about transcending the idea of self. It's about finding something greater that connects all of us. Gospel music is about tapping into that.

Surrender is working with what happens.

Jazz has a lot to do with being very present. You know the structure, then you flow through it.

I get bored very quickly.

I know how to make myself comfortable.

There's a beautiful, kind of seductive trap in being autobiographical in our writing of songs: We just get stuck in our own syrup, and it's so personal that it almost can be embarrassing to the listener.

I come from a lineage of ministers.

I call myself a singer-songwriter influenced by the gospel and jazz tradition. Naturally, because of my lifestyle and love for nature, there's a lot of folk and Americana there because that's just my life.

Music is primal: when it's done without pretension, you can really feel the shape of someone's soul.

The women and the men are teachers and preachers in my family, and a little bit of both those fell on me.

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.

I live just above a creek, and it's always very active. It almost sounds like the ocean. It's constant, and there's lots of big rocks in it, so it's got a great sound. It's one of my favorite things.

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

I love singing all types of genres.

Making a record and being a touring artist is about cooperation between spirit, craft, emotion, and focus.

I really just want an audience that is willing to let me live my life and share with them what I get out of my life.

I didn't wait around for my parents' opinion about my venture out into contemporary music.

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'm kind of a subtle person.

Salif Keita's one of my favorite artists.

A lot of people in the African-American community are raised by grandmothers, and that relationship is a special bond and circle.

Everyone I perform and tour with looks out for each other; we ensure we stay healthy.

I let the song guide me. I move through the space that I'm given rather than trying to make an impression on the material. I'm curious to learn from the music.

I want to record, tour, and just live life.

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.

Life is good. It might not go the way we plan it, but that's fine. We just do what we can.

I love talking to other musicians on tour and finding out what we all have to do, not just as artists but as business people. A lot of us are investing and trying to use social media. It is such an interesting level of responsibility and engagement on all these levels. I don't know how one can do this without absolute commitment and faith.

The whole musical institution of the church involves a lot of different styles of communication at the same time. Things like call and response. Sometimes they use the music to pray and work things out. And there's so much repetition in gospel, it's like churning butter.

'Moffou' is one of my favorite records.

I've always loved the woods, and I've always loved gardening and a lot of solitude and quiet.

Gardening is a working meditation for me. It helps me remember process, and it helps me remember patience.

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'd listen to the radio, especially when my parents were out on house calls to pray for people - you know, shut-ins. Sometimes, if we were incredibly sneaky, we could do it at night when everyone was asleep.

I think living in a way that's close to nature makes you feel like that - makes you feel how thin the veil is between life and death.

No matter what happens, I can go back to the mountains. I have nature and my wonderful friends and neighbors. I get so much by being there.