Lenny Kravitz Quotes

Love , creativity, and opportunity is in the air. Take it in and do your thing.

Music is my life, it is a reflection of what I go through.

One day we're going to watch people fight to the death, like Roman times. Instead of being in a coliseum, we're going to watch it on TV.

I've woken up from dreams and the whole song is there. I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.

There's certain things in life that I love. One is architecture. And music, culture, food, people. New Orleans has all of that.

Being free is a state of mind.

The idea of having to conform to someone else's ideal is unacceptable. I'm gonna be me. And if I can't be me, then I'd rather not do it.

We weren't put here to be miserable. We were put here to do the best we can, and we should take our energy and improve our state of being.

I am not trying to change the world. I am just offering my gift that God gave me, and if somebody is moved by it, that's beautiful.

I've always been into films. I've been offered lots of films but they've always been these very stereotypical roles. They wanted me to play some gangster or street guy, or pimp, drug addict.

If you listen to a lot of old funk records, the drums are really small. But you don't perceive it like that because the groove is so heavy.

Love is the most powerful energy there is.

My dream is to become a farmer. Just a Bohemian guy pulling up his own sweet potatoes for dinner.

None of those material possessions do anything to make your life any better.... I know a lot of people who have a lot of everything, and they're absolutely the most miserable people in the world. So it won't do anything for you unless you're a happy person and can have peace with yourself.

We have so many distractions. We're losing the family unit. We're losing the one-on-one. We're becoming extremely narcissistic. And we have to be careful about that. There's a lot to deal with out there.

Where I'm at in life, the women have got to come with something else, not just the body, but the mind and spirit. It usually trips them out, but that's the way it's going to be. I'm looking at the big picture.

If you look at the guys in the '70s, like Led Zeppelin, they had bigger planes than we do, they had more money. But they weren't singing about it.

I honestly don't remember how I wrote or did the songs. Or the sessions. They all become very much a blur. And each album is like that. It may be that there are different locations, it may take longer, shorter, or whatever, but it's always something that just happened.

To let go of the illusion that I'm in control is an important lesson, because I tend to be a person who likes to be in control, not only of my art but of my life and things around me, and it can be healthy up to a certain point, but at the end of the day, we have to go on faith and learn to let go and ride the wave.

I knew Slash in high school, but not very well. Just knew him as this kid that used to hang out in the hallway. Pretty much looked then the way he does now.

Confusion makes people uncomfortable. They can't put their finger on me.

My life is perfect because I accept it as it is.

You need to open up so that more comes through. And you can just feel that when your ego is not in the way and when you're letting it be what it wants to be. You have to let it be what it wants to be as opposed to what you think it should be.

I've always had to deal with being biracial, even in music. When I came on the scene, I'd go to these record labels, and they'd say things like, "Lenny Kravitz. That's a weird name." I'm brown-skinned and I've got these dreadlocks and I've got this Jewish last name.

Change is growth. For me it has been a very spiritual and musical rebirth.

I find cooking to be the one thing that relaxes me. I don't get to do it often . . .

I’ll be quite frank with you — I didn’t know about Hunger Games — so when I’m telling kids and they say, ‘Who are you playing?’ and I say Cinna, they go, ‘Oh you’re playing the gay guy.’ That was an actual answer. I’ve never brought that up yet. That’s how they perceived it. So I thought about it, and I read the book and I don’t see that he is or isn’t [gay]. He’s a designer, he’s a stylist, he has gold eyeliner—that doesn’t mean anything either way.

You're never promised your next breath.

Things that would shock us years ago are like nothing now.

We're beginning to play God and get into cloning. We give up quickly. Divorce is an easy option. So why not just create your own mate? Synthesize a human being. You get tired of it, turn it off and put it in the closet like the vacuum cleaner.

Personal relationship with God is not all just the ceremony and not the religion of doing something because you were told that's what you have to do; it's relationships, it's like we have relationships with our families, with our friends, with our loved ones.

When I'm making my music, I'm writing it, I'm producing it, I'm playing all the instruments, I'm performing. It's my own world where I do what I feel, and nobody tells me anything.

My mother's side of the family is from the Bahamas, and I spent time there on and off when I was growing up. It's the place where I feel at peace.

God is love and if you are ready, he always is.

I don't pull, I just receive.

I never sit down to write. When I'm moved, I do it. I just wait for it to come. You just hear it. I can't really describe writing. It's in my head. I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs...A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really. A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.

God gave me the gift to be able to play instruments and I have to play.

It was amazing to me that, all of a sudden, I was hearing my music on the radio and coming out of cars.

I am still into the people I listened to growing up, so I completely remember what is like to be a fan, I haven't changed.

Today, people are more into the glitz and the glamour of everything. We don't even read the inside of records anymore.

People see my photos and think I labor over my image and I'm this cool, brooding artist. But I'm just having fun with it.

For the last few years, it's been so chic for everybody to be miserable. Like if you're in with the cool crowd, you can't be happy.

I made the record that my life had me make. Each one is like a diary.

I feel like I'm only in the beginning of my career. I've only made five albums. It's not a lot.

The way I was raised and the people that I grew up around for the most part were very humble people, and I appreciate all that they taught me, and their energy and their magnanimity help keep me grounded.

I was taught by my grandfather that anything that your mind can conceive, you can have. It's a reality.

I have a great time with my band and on the stage we get along well.

We've always just gotten up there and played. We don't have any dancers, we don't have all that stuff going on, we just get up there and play.

When I was a kid and I bought a record, I ripped that thing open, I wanted to know who was playing what, what studio it was cut at, who was the string arranger, who was the engineer.

It's like a dream to come to Spain and stay for a couple of years and get somebody to teach me Spanish music.