Esperanza Spalding

I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized. ”

I just want to say, if you're going crazy, take a break. I felt overwhelmed by stuff that wasn't satisfying me, things I was supposed to do for my career. I stopped and said, 'Let me get back to the basics.' ”

I'm realizing now that I was always really curious about inviting people into a space and sharing information that way. But I didn't have any context for it. It was just fun because I was homeschooled and lonely and bored, and I'd do things to get people to come over. ”

Your sanity is harder to get back than money or contacts. You are the magic. You are the art. You can't lose that. ”

It's a pity that if someone who has a really profoundly potent art to share chooses not to or doesn't fit into this very thin slice of what's desirable and marketable, chances are the public will never get a chance to hear what they're doing. ”

When I was a kid, people called me Emily rather than Esperanza, even though my full name is Esperanza Emily Spalding. ”

Genre boundaries are good for marketing but they all but disappear when you're a player. ”

As you go back or move toward insights/ideas/events/words/lessons/mistakes in the past, you develop into the future from the present. I think that's pretty cool that two quote-unquote opposites are intrinsically linked. That whole theme of opposites being two sides of the same whole is a theme that's always been intriguing to me. ”

I focused primarily on being an instrumentalist and studying music and on my primary means of expression: composing and playing. ”

For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution. ”