Lauryn Hill Quotes

Being young and female in America, you watch a lot of T.V., and you grow up on false images of what love truly is. We think the man with the best rap will protect and save us, about it’s not usually that way. Then you learn love is something deeper and purer in form.

That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in.

I had to confront my fears and master my every demonic thought about inferiority, insecurity, or the fear of being black, young, and gifted in this Western culture.

Let optimists rule the world.

Be honest, brutally honest. That is what’s going to maintain relationships.

I need to be surrounded by people as passionate and as dedicated as I am.

I’m trying to open up my range and really sing more. With The Fugees initially, and even with ‘Miseducation,’ it was very hip-hop – always a singing over beats. I don’t think people have really heard me sing out. So if I do record again, perhaps it will have an expanded context. Where people can hear a bit more.

When you’re young and everything dramatic is exciting, you start to believe that hype that, in order to be an artist, you have to suffer. I’ve graduated from that school.

We can’t plan life. All we can do is be available for it.

You don’t know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It’s all in the practice.

Real religion is no religion at all.

This life is a process of learning.

We have to make sure the music and the message and the words and all the elements come through in our songs and every time we appear in public.

To those supporters who were told that I abandoned them, that is untrue. I abandoned greed, corruption, and compromise, never you, and never the artistic gifts and abilities that sustained me.

From the first time someone says, Who do you think you are? we learn how to repress.

Reality is easy. It’s deception that’s the hard work.

Everything we do should be a result of our gratitude for what God has done for us.

I wouldn’t even hold my kids sometimes because I didn’t want them to spit up on me when I was dressed for an awards show.

When I was working, and when I was making substantial amounts of money, I always filed and paid my taxes. This only stopped, when it was necessary to withdraw from society, in order to guarantee the safety and well-being of myself and my family.

I have a couple of all-time favorites: Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.

I believe God will make a way.

I tried to manipulate and control people, and I harbored resentment. I wanted to be forgiven, but I wouldn’t forgive others.

The danger I faced was not accepted as reasonable grounds for deferring my tax payments, as authorities, who despite being told all of this, still chose to pursue action against me, as opposed to finding an alternative solution.

Since those who believe they need a hero/celebrity outnumber the actual heroes/celebrities, people feel safe and comfortably justified in numbers, committing egregious crimes in the name of the greater social ego. Ironically diminishing their own true hero-celebrity nature in the process.

I never did anything I’m really ashamed of.

Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual. I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities.

I got into direct confrontation with everybody I love.

We don’t want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

I don’t know anybody that’s not emotionally unstable or schizophrenic.