SZA

“I learned everything the hard way - like, literally, everything. I know that God does that to people that he has lessons for. I just wish that I had learned less extreme lessons.”

“When your parents regulate everything you hear and everything you intake, it forces you to get creative in other ways. It sparked the writing bug and the very overactive imagination. Because I've had a lot of time by myself and a lot of time isolated from regular culture, I created my own.”

“I live in my imagination, so sometimes movies help me get lost. I feel like I'm in it.”

“Every day I grapple between 'I'm going to get married' and 'I'm going to spend the rest of my life alone with a poodle.'”

“I definitely want to get into environmental science and environmental politics, learning a lot more and preserving what's left of the world. That's such a sacred circle to be in. I'd love to contribute to that.”

“I love food, so having a lot of food allergies now and just having a really sensitive body, it forces me to be very mindful and conscious and eat when I'm hungry, not just when I'm bored, and just really slow down. Everything in moderation.”

“My parents are really conservative. My dad is Muslim, and my mom is the most conservative woman you've ever met. They're very aristocratic in the most quaint suburban way.”

“There's something different about growing up black and Muslim, especially in New Jersey. It's like when I left the mosque and I left my dad, I felt unprotected, but I also felt a weird sense of pride, like I was involved in this other way of living that was cool to me.”