“In the end, the truth finds a way to surface even if you don’t want it to.”

The truth is, everything that’s happened was supposed to happen. That doesn’t mean I don’t look back and think, God, I wish I hadn’t had to go through some of those things.

The media – they want to rush everything. They want to give their seedy opinions without knowing all the facts.

I love what I do. I have an insatiable appetite for creating things and wanting to get better at what I do and always growing and never stopping. I don’t know. It’s something I was born with. It’s definitely a drive. It’s a passion, and it’s driven for a love for what I do.

Until you value yourself enough and love yourself enough to know that, you can’t really have a healthy relationship.

I honestly wear myself out walking around, fixing this and fixing that. Maybe that’s why I like to work so much – so I can just get to that moment where I’m like, “Whoa.” I have to be super tired and knocked out to stop!

I like to cook Puerto Rican food. That’s what I grew up on: rice, beans, meat, some Italian-American food. I know my way around the kitchen.

You have to take care of yourself, your body, your mind, take care of your soul-be your own keeper.

If anyone can figure out how to balance my celebrity and my dual careers in music and film, it’s me. I don’t feel frightened; I feel challenged.

You have to remember the value of your individuality – that you have something special and different to offer that nobody else can.

I have my own high standards for what I want in a partner and how I want to be treated. I bring a lot to the table. I’m not talking about material things but what I have to offer as a person – love and loyalty and all the things that make a good relationship.

For me, love is the never-ending question. It is confusing. It is the answer, but it is also inundated with contradictions and complications.

You get what you give. What you put into things is what you get out of them.

You’ve gotta do things that make you happy. As women, we tend to give away a lot. We take care of a lot of people, and we can’t forget to take care of ourselves.

Once you have a lot of success, you become a target in many ways.

My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. But I don’t think I would have been very happy. I’d be in front of the jury singing.

People used to believe their life-or at least their life as a performer-was over at 28 or some ungodly age! God, when I think of myself back then, I had no idea who I was. I think I’m barely getting that under control now.

I love who I am, and I encourage other people to love and embrace who they are. But it definitely wasn’t easy – it took me a while.

[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions.

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

If we couldn’t laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.

Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.

Love wild, Love free, Because at the end of the day my darling, It’s just you and me.

When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.

The photo of me they choose to print when I die -Thoughts at 4 a.m