The year my mom worked as a secretary at an apparel company in midtown, she would often come home in tears because she had mistakenly called her boss by another coworker's name. 'You know how it is,' my father said, 'they all look the same. It's not your mom's fault. There's just no telling them apart. Same high nose and deep-set eyes.'

My privileged upbringing and education and linguistic fluency gave me such proximity to whiteness that it stung all the more to still find myself outside of it. My mother, on the other hand, not only accepted that she would always be an outsider in this country but also believed it to be a finer fate and home than any other she could have had.

When you make a solo record, it's you. It's your name. It has to be the right songs for how you feel.

When they said, 'Why is Floyd Mayweather not fighting Manny Pacquiao?' it was because Manny Pacquiao had a boss. I don't have a boss.

Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.

My mom was a ventriloquist and she always was throwing her voice. For ten years I thought the dog was telling me to kill my father.