Of course I am stressed after I finish working on an album about what an audience will think, if it will be successful or not.

We need self-confidence in our ability to build Africa. I trust in Mali and I trust in music.

You just have to try before thinking that you can't.

There are some things around us that are not actually useful. I didn't know that before. It's very new for me to understand. That became my way of writing: I can see also the new myself.

It's a great experience just to understand that finally being well known is not the most important thing.

The interesting thing for me is to put together all my influences and all my experiences I got through my traveling with my father.

When you are able to make a living with your job as an artist, that means you have an audience and you have to thank this audience.

Sometimes there are painters or very famous artists who start to become artists after they are dead because an audience or a public know about their art after they die.

When you have a chance to be an artist with an audience in your lifetime, you have to say thanks to your audience. That's a great thing. That's the best thing that can happen to an artist.

You can be a star here in Europe and not be known at all in the United States.

American audiences don't react in the same way as European ones to African music because, I think, Europeans listen to this music through all the festivals that exist here.

When an animal comes between the lion and its prey, the animal first becomes the prey before the main prey.

It was like the panting of a thousand puppies.

You don't have to know everything in the world. We aren't supposed to. It makes you boring in mixed company if you can't be interested and ask questions of other people.

Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

The saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

Simple is hard. Easy is harder. Invisible is hardest.

Oh, I never use a seat belt. I don't believe in gravity.

Energy is the key to creativity. Energy is the key to life.