“I came from a very strict background, and didn’t hear any Jamaican music when I was growing up.”

It doesn’t surprise me that people can’t see beyond my image. It’s amazing, but I can understand it. That’s what image is for. But it’s never a problem for me. It’s only a problem for them. I don’t really care. I do what I want regardless.

I go feminine, I go masculine. I am both, actually. I think the male side is a bit stronger in me, and I have to tone it down sometimes. I’m not like a normal woman, that’s for sure.

I never do what anyone else is doing. I could walk away from music and become a farmer or do some crochet. The worst thing in life for me is to do something I’m not happy doing.

I never thought I was going to be a singer. That was an accident.

Disco was like the celebration of music through dance and my God! When you heard the music sometimes it was like, if you don’t get up and dance, you aren’t human!

I always thought that feminine, softer side was just too vulnerable to put out there, because then it’s like you’re opening up a door for everybody to come in, and you don’t know who’s going to come in that door.

It was very painful combing my hair. My grand-uncle was a Pentecostal bishop, and he was very strict: our hair couldn’t be permed or straightened. So I just cut it all off.

I don’t take the English press seriously at all because all they want is dirt. I hate them.

When I perform on stage I become those male bullies, those dominators from my childhood. That’s probably why it’s so scary, because they scared me.

Survival is my primary instinct…it’s out of my control. It’s stronger than me. It’s an outside force, a voice that says ‘do this for your life or it will devour you.’

In the Seventies and Eighties we all had our fun, and now and then we went really too far. But, ultimately, it required a certain amount of clear thinking, a lot of hard work and good make-up to be accepted as a freak.

I have just as much woman in me as I have man. It’s just a matter of channeling the energy into which way you use it.

I’ve turned down millions of dollars to go on reality TV. It’s an absolute no-go.

Forget health clinics and gyms. Sex is the best cure. One good night of sex and your problems are gone.

Growing up in Jamaica, the Pentecostal church wasn’t that fiery thing you might think. It was very British, very proper. Hymns. No dancing. Very quiet. Very fundamental.

My husband used to shout at my mother, ‘What is wrong with your daughter? I’m married to a man.’

The Yankees have strict rules. You can have a mustache but no other facial hair.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.

I had very strict parents, I could never go outside or go to parties.

Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.

I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence.