“The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, ‘What’s so great about Billie Holiday?’”

Discipline is a necessary tool to help you get what you want in life. It forces you to stay on center and to move away from the things that are not necessary.

I’m a parent, and I try to take care of my health and keep my life in order. In the last few years I’ve really had to decide what’s important to me, and it seems to me that my family and my health are top on the list. And those have nothing to do with show business.

It’s easier for me to sit with the producers and the writers and I give them my feelings and my thoughts and what I think I feel like singing about and then they go away and write it.

Do you know where you going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Where are you going to? Do you know?

I think that if my voice for some reason changes – because your voice does change – then it’s time for me not to sing.

I’ve never been damaged or hurt by press. It’s just that I think it’s unfair to use your name in media.

My life has often been described as ‘from rags to riches’ but in fact, the Ross’s were never raggedy.

If I do an interview, then I take full responsibility. I figure I’m not going to talk to anyone that I think is unethical anyway.

I jog and I roller-skate. I dance – that’s the best exercise.

I try to choose the songs that really are basically coming from my heart. I think that through the songs that I select, people know what’s going on in my life.

I don’t think getting in and out of a limousine has anything to do with being an icon.

Most people are so hard to please that if they met God, they’d probably say yes, she’s great, but.

I’d traveled a lot, was going temporarily insane and became very successful, but there was no one to take that all home to.

I listen to most everything that’s out there because I need to stay aware of what’s happening in the industry.

With the Supremes I made so much money so fast all I wanted to do was buy clothes and pretty things. Now I’m comfortable with money and it’s comfortable with me.

I even thought of adopting a child as a single mother.

I want to record if the Lord wants me to still record, and I just want to do my work on the road as long as I got those fans out there.

Religion: ‘My identity is built on being a good person.’ Gospel: ‘My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on Christ’s.’

[E]conomic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics

My record company had to beg me to stop filmin’ music videos in the projects.

When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to… because I was looking for a deal. I didn’t have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn’t need pen or paper – my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.

I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.