“To wanna be me is to go through not just the good but the bad. You wanna share my story identically? Man, you gonna take some lumps.”

Most people don’t have so much talent that they can become a success all their own. We all need people to help us and lift us up.

To me, I always felt like I was carrying a torch for women of any size to be themselves – it doesn’t matter whether you’re a size 2 or a 22, just be who you are.

Every woman is a queen, and we all have different things to offer.

Dreams become reality when we put our minds to it.

It’s not always easy to do the right thing. But, doing the right thing makes you strong, it builds character.

Be bold, be brave enough to be your true self.

I write pretty often. I have a home studio. Music is what I do for fun. I never get tired of it, so to take a break from [TV and movies], I would go make some music.

If my brother and I wanted money in our pockets, we had to get jobs – my first was at 15, at Burger King.

There are different flavours of sexiness.

There are so many things I’d like to do. Like becoming a parent. To me that is the next natural progression in life.

You need to give yourself the time to think freely. I don’t know if that is political. But sometimes things are political because you observe things that are right or that are wrong and you want to speak on them.

I was taught from a young age that many people would treat me as a second-class citizen because I was African-American and because I was female.

You can huff and puff. But blow me down? I doubt it kid, or you get your ass whupped.

When I was around 18, I looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re either going to love yourself or hate yourself.’ And I decided to love myself. That changed a lot of things.

I think as far as the music industry is concerned, it’s kind of been the wild, wild West in a way with the Internet, which is not necessarily a bad thing to me.

I do feel like I have a direct connection with God for some reason; always have since I was a little kid – I would talk to God, talk to the sky.

Drugs are bad for you. They will fuck you up.

If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation.

I want to do something different, really different, and if it alienates people that’s too bad.

No matter the bad things that happened in past time, let’s try to live the best we can now.

I don’t believe in bad people. I believe that people, somewhere inside, have the potential to realize themselves.

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.