“My name, Diana Ross, is my name and nobody should be able to use that for exploitative purposes but me.”

They tell me that it will be hard to find a man strong enough to love my own strength and independence, and not worry about being Mr. Diana Ross, but I disagree. I know absolutely that that man is somewhere out there.

I really don’t think that Detroit was any different than New York of Boston or Philadelphia. Kids always wanted to listen to music outside because that’s where they hung out with their friends.

I learned something from that. If someone asks me something that I really don’t want to do, I say no. I have to trust that. And I’m not afraid to talk money.

You can always tell where Diana Ross has been by the hair that’s left behind!

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.

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

When you hire great actors, you’re lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You’re happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director’s chair.

There was once a great actor named George C. Scott. He was on stage in the Delacourt Theater in Central Park, where they do Shakespeare every summer, and he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

You can’t name an institution that doesn’t depend on volunteers.

If somehow every volunteer vanished tomorrow, so much of this country would come to a standstill: schools, hospitals and libraries.

This is not a village of hate. It’s a village of hope. Don’t let midgets give us a bad name. There are still giants in Harlem, giants who will stand up for our children.

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

It must on the contrary be named.