Top 150 Jill Scott Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “There’s something really magical about having a child – it’s like permission to begin again, start over, reevaluate some things, check yourself. Recognize yourself.”

— Jill Scott

52. “If a woman is happy, then your society is happy.”

— Jill Scott

53. “I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’m not looking for it. What I can say about my divorce and my failed engagement is that I learned where my bar is.”

— Jill Scott

54. “Anytime you share life stories with other people, you know, you are acknowledging their humanity and kind of accessing some things about yourself, and other people start to expect things about themselves. It’s kind of like a fellowship.”

— Jill Scott

55. “I just think fashion is about enjoying yourself and being comfortable in your skin and allowing you to be you – all the way live.”

— Jill Scott

56. “If I feel really ugly or unhappy, sometimes I’ll choose bright colors so they’ll make me feel good. Yellows, pinks, light blues and orange. I just want to feel good all the time if I can. And colors and hairstyles and all that kind of helps out.”

— Jill Scott

57. “When I was growing up, my mother would take me to plays and museums, and we’d talk about life. Those times helped shape who I became.”

— Jill Scott

58. “One of the things I love about Africa is the amount of dignity and respect and humility you see all the time. You don’t realise how often you’re disrespected until you are surrounded by respect.”

— Jill Scott

59. “When you have a cast and crew of people who make it light hearted and crack jokes, and break treats, and understand that we are all in this together. That’s a biggest plus that you can have.”

— Jill Scott

60. “At my aunt’s funeral, I promised myself that I wouldn’t be bound by the belief that I’m supposed to stay in anything – whether it’s a relationship, a job, a house, or a circumstance – if it makes me miserable. She gave me the courage to find my own happiness.”

— Jill Scott

61. “I’d love to work with Missy Elliott. I’d love to work with Bonnie Raitt. I’d love, love, love to work with Barbra Streisand. I’m reaching, because why not? You don’t know what’s going to happen in this life.”

— Jill Scott

62. “I think every individual has his or her own power, and it’s a matter of working, taking time and defining what that power is.”

— Jill Scott

63. “I didn’t leave home until 27. I was an only child raised in Philadelphia by my mother and grandmother. My grandmother controlled the stove. She made a lot of potato meals – mashed potato, potato souffle, potato pancakes. When we didn’t have electricity, we ate romantically by candlelight.”

— Jill Scott

64. “I was reading poetry to my girlfriends, and they were like, ‘You’re really good. You should go to some poetry readings or something.’ And I eventually went and got a, you know, somewhat of a name for myself and a little bit of a following.”

— Jill Scott

65. “I’ve been reading poetry publicly for 20 years, and this is what you do – you express, you sometimes dig a bit to get a conversation started. That’s the point of poetry. You’re supposed to go, ‘Hmmmm,’ and ‘Woooh!’”

— Jill Scott

66. “I’ve been around the world and I’ve had bras made in different places, and each time I’m experiencing the same troubles: the painful shoulders, the underwire cutting into my flesh.”

— Jill Scott

67. “Heartbreak was the impetus to me writing poems and music in the first place.”

— Jill Scott

68. “I’m not interested in being commodified. I’m not into being sold. I’m not a slave.”

— Jill Scott

69. “I’ve always been a firm believer that soul music never dies. The artists we still listen to today, years after their music was first heard are mostly soul artists; Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Chaka Khan. We still sing along to all of them with our hearts.”

— Jill Scott

70. “Our minds do understand that people of all races find genuine love in many places. We dig that the world is full of amazing options.”

— Jill Scott

71. “Power doesn’t have to be on such a big scale for powerful things to occur. Within your own home, you can be a powerful woman as a mother, influencing your children’s lives.”

— Jill Scott

72. “One of the reasons my ex-husband and I broke up is that he stopped eating my food.”

— Jill Scott

73. “My heart and prayers go out to all single moms because it’s tough, and I can’t imagine any teenager dealing with a baby and all those hormones raging.”

— Jill Scott

74. “I’ve learned that friendship does not equate business, business does not equate friendship.”

— Jill Scott

75. “My grandmother told me: ‘Never be in debt to anyone or anything.’ Which is probably why I’ve never been financially extravagant – I still go to Costco. I’m always conscious of living within my means.”

— Jill Scott

76. “I’m looking for someone who works as hard as I do. Who loves their work as much as I do, so at the end of the night we have something real to talk about, something exciting that makes our blood flow and boil.”

— Jill Scott

77. “I do so play an instrument! I play air! I play the air with my fingers, and I’m in touch with the deepest emotions within. It took me a while to learn that whatever I feel like doing is the right thing. If I want to play an invisible instrument, I will.”

— Jill Scott

78. “That’s what I enjoy most about my music – that it heals in its own time and makes us look at ourselves in its own time.”

— Jill Scott

79. “A nutritionist has told me to have very little butter and very little spices, but I can’t live like that.”

— Jill Scott

80. “I don’t write on demand – I wait for inspiration to come.”

— Jill Scott

81. “For my writing, and because I love talking to young women about life, I often asked them which would they rather have – a father in the house with them while growing up or a big butt? I tell you 86 percent of the time, girls say a big butt because it gets them further.”

— Jill Scott

82. “Being on set is a hard thing. A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, you get to make a movie, and it’s all fun.’ But the reality is, it’s a lot of hours. It’s a lot of reshoots; it’s a lot of waiting. And you can become increasingly agitated by the amount of time that you are waiting. But that’s real.”

— Jill Scott

83. “Mos Def is one of the most creative, intelligent human beings I’ve had the opportunity to work with. He is fun. The entire time, he would go in and out of different characters, just for the fun of it. Awesome energy.”

— Jill Scott

84. “I’ve been enjoying playing with fashion – gold grills and diamond grills have just become a part of that.”

— Jill Scott

85. “One day, I just got up to read a poem and started singing. I looked around – the reaction was great. And I said, ‘Oh, boy. I like this.’”

— Jill Scott

86. “Singing and acting suit me. I made a vow to myself, to do everything that I can do with this life that I have, and I have to find the time to do this. Sometimes I need to be an actress. Sometimes I don’t need to be Jill.”

— Jill Scott

87. “There are a lot of difficulties with people trying to conceive.”

— Jill Scott

88. “Sometimes I felt as a writer I was purging, and it almost hurt to purge to that level. Now it doesn’t feel that way, maybe because I’m older. Maybe life has given me some punches, but it didn’t knock me down.”

— Jill Scott

89. “I am a huge Prince fan. It’s a very rare thing for him to have people open for him. It’s been the Time and Sheila E., and that’s about it. Building a relationship with him has been like a dream come true. I’ve been looking for a mentor, and I feel like I have that in him.”

— Jill Scott

90. “Nikki Giovanni! I got a book of hers from the library, and there was this woman who could paint me on paper with words – my whole little experience. I thought it was wonderful.”

— Jill Scott

91. “I like to be in the now, now. Sometimes musicians have to wait for me to be genuine with it. As an actor, I don’t have that luxury. You have to make it legit when they say ‘action.’”

— Jill Scott

92. “I’m being all of me, and it feels stupendous. I don’t want to leave this feeling.”

— Jill Scott

93. “I am a woman, I make mistakes. I make them often. God has given me a talent and that’s it.”

— Jill Scott

94. “I think human beings will always still really enjoy using our imaginations, and ‘Fringe’ allows you to do that. It’s slightly scary and believable. There just might be an alternate universe. There just might be people on the other side that are like us, living a different life.”

— Jill Scott

95. “A woman is more than the sum of her parts. So I had an opportunity to present some work at the White House. I chose not just to talk about the sky, the planet, love or heartache. I wanted to actually be there, to place a mark on that moment.”

— Jill Scott

96. “I was once making a burger for myself at my boyfriend’s house and a lyric started pouring out and I had to catch it, so I ran to another room to write it down, but then the kitchen caught fire. His cabinets were charred, and he was furious. But it was worth it for a song.”

— Jill Scott

97. “People think that lemon is good for the voice, but it dries it out.”

— Jill Scott

98. “You have to be humble when you’re dealing with God.”

— Jill Scott

99. “Nothing has gotten me out of Philadelphia. I moved 20 minutes away from Philly. That’s about it.”

— Jill Scott

100. “My earliest influence was Quincy Jones. I thought ‘The Wiz’ soundtrack was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. It was my first record and you had Michael Jackson, Ted Ross, Nipsey Russell and Diana Ross on it. I even took it to show and tell in third grade!”

— Jill Scott