More Myself: A Journey is an intimate book revealing artist Alicia Key’s path from self-censorship to finding herself. More Myself is part autobiography, part narrative documentary.
In her book, More Myself, Alicia shares her quest for truth―about her identity, her past, and her journey from sacrificing herself to celebrating her worth. More Myself encourages readers to define themselves while living in a world that tries to dictate your identity. We’re sharing powerful quotes from Alicia Key’s More Myself to inspire you on your journey to self-discovery.
On Self Discovery
“The path to self-discovery is not a straight line. It’s a zigzag. We move in and out of awareness: one step forward, three steps to the left, a baby step back, another leap forward. A lightbulb moment might shine brightly one day but then flicker the next. It takes work to hold tightly to a certain consciousness, to live in its wisdom. Every day, I have to intentionally maintain an awareness of my value.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“On this part of my journey, I’m at last quieting the noise of our world—removing all the external distractions and opinions and judgments and tuning in to my own voice. I’m recognizing my own power and owning it. I’m finally trusting myself, believing I already have inside me the answers I most crave. And above all, I’m discovering who I am at my core—and becoming, day by day, more myself.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Growth requires movement. And often, the only way forward is through an exit door.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“All I knew was that I needed to flee as far away as I could from the pressure cooker my life had become. A few days at a local spa would not suffice. My spirit was demanding a complete and total eject, a force powerful enough to propel me five thousand miles across the Atlantic. In fact, this was not a vacation. It was a prison break.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“I now understand that trying to be the next anyone is as foolish as it sounds. The shoes you dream of filling have already been worn ragged through their soles. You’ve got to step into your own kicks and do you.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“An aha moment is not a happy ending—it’s an open doorway, one you have to choose to walk through.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“But from this side of life, I can see how every moment, every experience, every pivot, even my supposed missteps have been life’s way of getting me where I have always been meant to go. Rather than resisting the current, I’ve learned to surrender.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“And when I reveal my true heart, not everyone is going to approve. What I know now is that I don’t need them to.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Bliss is a beautiful destination, but you can often only reach its shores after a turning point. It’s as if the universe is testing you to be sure you are strong enough to make it through the murky waters, not just the serene ones so that you can move to a new and unknown place in yourself.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Losing Yourself
“We adjust ourselves to fit, to adapt to others’ ideas of who we should be. We shift ourselves not in sweeping pivots but in movements so tiny that they are hardly perceptible even in our view. Years can pass before we finally discover that after handing over our power, piece by small piece, we no longer even look like ourselves.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“It’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment when we internalize others’ assessments; it’s usually not just a single experience but rather a series of moments that bruise the spirit and lead us to distrust ourselves and those around us. And then we wake up at age seventeen or twenty-five or thirty-seven and realize we don’t know the last time we’ve lived life only to please ourselves”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Money
“I’d grown up in survival mode, clutching tightly to every dollar that came my way. And when you spend from a belief that every cent you earn will be your last, you operate from a place of scarcity– a context that runs counter to the energy of abundance. ”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Money, like all life, is an energy exchange. You give yourself over to whatever you’re passionate about, and what comes back to you is energy in the form of monetary compensation. You attract more or less of what you want to by how you choose to interact with it, as well as what you believe about yourself. Do you truly feel you deserve what you’re asking for? Are you worth it? How you answer impacts what comes your way.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“What you focus on expands. If you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. And if you live with an open palm rather than a closed fist, you leave room for immeasurable blessings to flow through your hands.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Boundaries
“I initially pulled back from the recognition. And yet that desire to step away was at odds with an urge just as powerful in me: the desire to be liked, to be seen as the nice girl, to accommodate others even if that meant dismissing my own needs. That tendency had been years in the making, sprouting up in two very fertile conditions: a childhood spent as a chameleon, shifting constantly to keep my mother more calm than fiery; and a world in which women, for generations, have been conditioned into voicelessness where their opinions are cast aside dismissively, the expectation being that they accommodate others and put their own needs last.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“My boundaries were weak during this period. When my team filled every possible space on my calendar and left me hardly any personal time, I didn’t know how to push back, to say no, to advocate for myself.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Life’s Gifts
“That though passageway came with a surprising revelation. When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability. Your heart is pierced. You’re broken open. You’re hyper-aware of what you’re feeling.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability. Your heart is pierced. You’re broken open. You’re hyperaware of what you’re feeling.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“The gift you give yourself is more energy to do the work you actually want to be doing. Saying no doesn’t make you less of an artist or human being. It makes you a stronger and more purposeful one.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Death is a gift meant to wake up the living, to nudge us toward a life of purpose and intention.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Womanhood
“I definitely wanted freedom, but I wasn’t yet ready to step into it, embody it, breathe it, own it.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“The world can be a challenging place for us women to navigate. We often find ourselves feeling burned out, incapable, and lonely and yet we’re still so resilient.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“I wrote ‘Superwoman’ not because I felt like one. The lyrics were what I needed to hear, words that affirmed that, even in my brokenness, there is strength.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“When you empower a woman, you lift her entire family and community.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Lessons in Love
“It has been said that a girl grows up to choose a man who either bears a striking resemblance to her father, or one who is nothing like him. Both choices are, at their core, reactions.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Our relationship which was already strained deteriorated from there. I retreated to the patterns I had in place from the beginning of the time together. I didn’t communicate my frustrations. I played the same record I had played throughout my childhood staying silent and pulling back in an attempt to keep things cool. ”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“When you don’t speak your truth for years at a time, the words left unspoken slowly leak the air out of your connection. Even if years later you are ready to say what you couldn’t earlier, the moment has passed. The details and circumstances have faded from the memory and yet the emotions linger. And then the day finally comes when you no longer recognize the person you first loved.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“It was also yet another opportunity to see myself in full. A chance to recognize all those places in me that still needed to grow. All the ways in which I’d swallowed my truth rather than voicing it. We don’t draw loved ones into our lives coincidentally. They’re there to shine a light on our unfinished emotional business to reveal to us our deepest tendencies. And as my life has proven to me even now, those patterns appear time and again, often, cleverly disguised. And they’ll keep right on showing up until we’re willing to truly look at them.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Motherhood
“I also admitted the question I had been carrying around. What if I’m not cut out for motherhood? What if I fail at being responsible for a child? A life. What if I can’t do this? There’s probably not a parent on earth who hasn’t asked those questions in some form at some point in time. I had to be so strong outwardly, but inside I felt afraid and emotional. The fear was real.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On How Money Can’t Buy Happiness
“From a financial standpoint, they were set. Mansions, cars, and vacation homes, and yet despite their enormous wealth, they were experiencing deep emptiness. A condition no amount of money could cure.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“As I watched my friends struggle, I thought, ‘If striving for billions comes with that kind of emptiness, then I’m straight.’ ”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“The point isn’t that wealth should be feared or disregarded. My family is successful and we plan to build on that, but as we move in that direction, I work to stay mindful of what I most value. For me, it comes down to capacity. What kind of life do I want to build? And what kind of sacrifices will that require? What commitments can I let go of so I can remain a conscious partner and parent? ”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Body Image
“We live in a culture where there’s seldom space for imperfection for celebrating our perfectly imperfect bodies. ”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“More time would have to pass before I realized how our society’s oppressive standard of female beauty had left deep claw marks on me.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“It’s hard not to begin doubting yourself just a little when with a stroke of an airbrush someone slims down your thighs or shaves off half your booty.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“I’m supposed to own my body and its presentation. That I know for sure.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“A lot of these changes were a natural revolution, just part of exploring and experimenting with different looks and growing into my full womanhood, but behind the shifting wardrobe, beyond the softening around the edges, there lurked a message. You are not sufficient as you are.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“For every performance, every photoshoot and appearance there’s an expectation for female flawlessness.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Creating this impenetrable armor of perfection is literally an hours-long production. And for my first fifteen years in music, I went through it nearly every day. The makeup would sit on my face for 10 – 12 hours at a time off and under hot stage lights, always settling into every crevice of my face to clog my pores and lead to breakouts. My skin couldn’t breathe! In time, nor could I.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Without the makeup, I no longer recognized myself. My anxiety over appearance also invaded my private world. Any mother can tell you, that after having a couple of babies, it takes frickin forever for your body to recover. In some ways, it never fully does. For months after you give birth, you’re like, ‘What happened? And how come I’m not bouncing back?’ Add to that having others seemingly fixated on every ripple of my skin, every hint of my cellulite.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“There were only two options to breaking out of my prison, to always leave my house ready for a closeup, which ver parent can testify is impossible. Or to finally get comfortable with my true face. Other’s opinions be damned.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“I still wear makeup when I feel like it, though less of it. And I still enjoy experimenting with a new shade of lipstick or eyeshadow. The point is that I and everyone else have a choice and we should be able to freely make that choice from one moment to the next without society’s standard of beauty hovering over us. I am my own standard-bearer, so are you.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Illusions of Bliss
” ‘What’s your illusion of bliss?’ The three of us sat around for hours candidly discussing the things we all can latch onto in our quest for temporary comfort. Sexual pleasure, work and ambition, food, financial gain, drugs, and any number of other addictions. Holding our own experiences in illusions to the light was an exercise in self-examination.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Self-Worth
“For so many years, I thought I was just being modest. I never wanted to come across as self-absorbed or as someone with a big head is how women are brought up. Don’t as for more. Don’t take credit. Don’t outshine others, but there on the couch, it hit me that my alleged modesty was just a disguise. A mask for a lack of self-worth.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“If you would’ve asked me at age twenty-two if I was worthy, I would’ve answered loud and proud, ‘Yes!’ But it’s possible to declare a woman’s worth and yet not fully know your own. It’s possible to say you want a grand life, but then continue to play small.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
On Owning Your Truth
“I’m finally allowing myself to just be. Be giddy. Be irritable. Be vulnerable. Be silly. Be exhilarated. Be whom ever and however I am. That is my practice, my daily meditation. It’s also my daily prayer for all of us. That we allow others the same freedom of expression that we are learning to grant ourselves.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“I have to intentionally maintain an awereness of my value. I know I’m worthy, but you don’t cross over to the land of self worth and just become a permanent resident. You have to keep your passport current. You have to work to reserve your status.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“In life, we don’t get what we ask for. We get what we believe.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“What we believe about ourselves shows up in our energy. It’s how we walk into a room. It’s how we communicate through body language. ‘I don’t deserve to be here.’ It’s whether we sit up straight or hideout in the back of a meeting.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“It’s okay to own a desire for more. In fact, it’s how we honor those who have paved the way for our place at the table. ‘You don’t want modesty,’ Maya Angelou once said, ‘You want humility.’ Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I’m here because I’ve been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I’m paying for someone else who has yet to come.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“When we dim our light, we don’t do anyone a favor. It’s a disservice because when you’re in the presence of someone who knows his or her worth, like the extraordinary Maya did, you want to shine brighter. Self honoring energy is contagious.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“At the start of my career, I thought I was such a novice, but at nineteen, I knew the one thing that is most important to know. I understood who I was at my center. I was closer to my truth then I’d become in my twenties. It’s not that I wasn’t authentic to some deree at every stage. I’ts just that out of a desire to please others or to squeeze into a mold, I made the outside world my point of reference.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“Finally, in my early thirties I stepped into my girl on fire energy.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“And yet I had to take the journey to rediscover what my spirit had already told me. I don’t have to fit in. None of us does. Our uniqueness isn’t a scar but a beauty mark. What makes us different is also what makes us wildly, boldly, and marvelously who we were born to be.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
E.E. Cummings (Poet & Playwright)
“It planted a seed that put me back on the beautiful path called identity. Who are we really? What are all the various pieces that form us? Which parts of ourselves do we embrace or dismiss? And what does that mean or not mean? Most of us are comfortable expressing certain aspects of ourselves while other sides may get left in the shade by default.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“I am strong and fierce and brave no doubt. Yet, I’m also someone who has found myself on the bathroom floor boo hoo’ing feeling vulnerable. I’m also the woman who doesn’t always know how to rise to my feet and take the next step.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“The fear has been replaced by a sense of freedom. I am more secure in my identity both as an artist and as a woman.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
“For as long as I am alive, I will be growing and improving. Wielding my pen as the author of my own forever. But even as I lift my life to the next level, I hope to always recognize my reflection. I want to know who I am and accept every part of that identity. I am frightened and I am fearless. I am weak and a warrior. I am uncertain and I am confident. And by learning to embrace the paradox in it all, I am more myself.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself: A Journey
