“My parents just tell me, ‘If you know what you want, you should stay determined and go for it. You can do anything.’”

It’s hard to say what I want my legacy to be when I’m long gone.

I don’t think about my previous success. I’m happy that the work I’ve done has been very successful.

All I can do is leave it in God’s hands and hope that my fans feel where I’m coming from.

I’m a total performer.

I don’t want to abandon one work for the other, and I don’t think I need to sacrifice anything to put my all into either one of them.

Keep working hard and you can get anything that you want.

It’s fun to be creative and innovative and come up with something crazy. So I need people to work with who are not going to be afraid to take it to the left a bit.

It’s in how you carry yourself. I’ve always been a very mature person, and I’ve always known what I wanted. And I go after it no matter what.

People are gonna look up to me because I’m young, black, and female.

I began to work the stage and get the audience into it. I also learned how to have fun out there. It is something I will never forget.

I think it’s important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. I want longevity. I don’t want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin.

If you want to go to the mall, you have to take security. But it’s always cool. The kids are amazing.

I know that people think I’m sexy and I am looked at as that. It is cool with me. It’s wonderful to have sexy appeal. If you embrace it, it can be a very beautiful thing.

The Matrix is top secret. There isn’t much that can be said right now.

There is always a bit of pressure to do a good album – to do good work, period. I really put a lot of pressure on myself, more so than other people. But I try not to let that overwhelm me to the point where I can’t even do good work. I just put it aside and do the best that I know that I can.

When a fan comes up to you and says I love your music, there’s nothing better than that.

I was always determined that races should begin on time and I never deviated from that policy.

Barack Obama treated too lightly the people and forces determined to destroy him. They spat in his face and didn’t even get ticketed for a misdemeanor.

It’s not simply what we feel, but what we feed, that determines what we do and how we live.

Nothing is meaningless it’s how we assign meaning to the past that determines how we experience the present, and future.

Art is man determined to die sane.

Being successful is not determined by the amount of money you make but by the amount of lives you affect and influence for the better.

The line between life or death is determined by what we are willing to do.

The abundance of our lives is not determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Christ makes abundant life possible if we choose to live it now.