'Be You!' Lizzo's Most Empowering Quotes to Get You Feelin' Good as Hell

"I deserve the spotlight. I deserve the attention. I'm talented, I'm young, I'm hot. You know? And I've worked hard. ... I had to blaze a trail. There was no Lizzo before Lizzo."

- PEOPLE's Women Changing the World Issue

"I'm so much more than [brave]. Because I actually present that, I have a whole career. It's not a trend."

- Rolling Stone

"We eventually get used to everything ... So people just gon' have to get used to my ass."

- Rolling Stone

"I'm all about body positivity and self-love because I believe that we can save the world if we first save ourselves."

- at a show at the Red Room in Sydney, Australia

"I love creating shapes with my body, and I love normalizing the dimples in my butt or the lumps in my thighs or my back fat or my stretch marks. I love normalizing my black-ass elbows. I think it's beautiful."

- Essence

"I made a decision to be myself because I knew I had no choice. Sometimes the label 'unapologetic' bothers me because it can be loaded, because it means we have to apologize for something in the first place. I'm not ignorant to the fact that we had to have a demeanor of lowering ourselves culturally just to exist. But I'm trying to shake up the narrative about how we're supposed to act."

- Essence

"I have nothing to hide. There's no shame anymore. I just post myself. It's like, you take me as I am. You don't have to love me."

- to reporters in a follow up to her unedited Instagram

"I don't think that loving yourself is a choice. I think that it's a decision that has to be made for survival; it was in my case. Loving myself was the result of answering two things: Do you want to live? 'Cause this is who you're gonna be for the rest of your life. Or are you gonna just have a life of emptiness, self-hatred and self-loathing? And I chose to live, so I had to accept myself."

- NBC News

"Who I am, and the essence of me, and the things that I choose to do as a grown-ass woman, can inspire you to do the same. They don't have to be like me - you need to be like you, and never ever let somebody stop you or shame you from being yourself. This is who I've always been - now everyone's looking at it, and your criticism can just remain your criticism."

- on Instagram

"I'm tired of the bullsh-. And I don't have to know your story to know that you're tired of the bullsh- too. It's so hard trying to love yourself in a world that doesn't love you back, am I right? So I just want to take this opportunity to feel good as hell. Because you deserve to feel good as hell. We deserve to feel good as hell."

- 2019 MTV Video Music Awards

"The body-positive movement is the body-positive movement, and we high five. We're parallel. But my movement is my movement. When all the dust has settled on the groundbreaking-ness, I'm going to still be doing this. I'm not going to suddenly change. I'm going to still be telling my life story through music. And if that's body-positive to you, amen. That's feminist to you, amen. If that's pro-black to you, amen. Because ma'am, I'm all of those things."

- Allure

"You know how long it took me to fall in love with this body? My butt was my least favorite thing about myself. And I learned to love it. And now it's the thing everybody can't stop talking about ... Be you. Do you. Don't let anybody steal your joy."

- on CBS This Morning

"I didn't have enough women to look up to and they weren't given enough space in the industry to carve out a lane for big girls that are brown and black and want to sing and dance without getting shit talked and body shamed. I'm out here and I set my mind to it. I want to be a sex symbol and music goddess and I'm out here trying to make that happen for myself. I'm here for the fantasy but I want to be a part of that fantasy. I'm just as fine as those girls."

- Vogue

"It's unfair for us to assume that people know how to love themselves … [corporations have] spent decades telling people they weren't good enough and selling them an ideal of beauty. All of a sudden you're selling them self-love? People don't know how to love themselves, because they were trying to look like the motherfucker you were selling them!"

- The Guardian

"If you're not making clothes for me, and if you don't want to make clothes for me, I don't want to wear your [designs]. I look good in other things anyway. But if you want to change the game and dress a fat body, call me."

- Allure

"When I have to make decisions, I always choose honesty and I always stay true to myself, because I know at the end of the day that is what's going to remain. That is what's going to be the legend: That I was true to myself and that I honored every person by staying truthful to them."

- Rolling Stone