“You really just want to know that somebody loves you for you. Sometimes you feel like an ATM machine with a wig on it.”

I look around and see the things I have, and I remember not having them. That is one thing that keeps me grounded. I’m definitely the same person I was. I never lose me, I never lose the real person.

I’m far from perfect. I’m still learning. I overworked myself, and I paid the price. I consider the breakdown a breakthrough. I needed to hit rock bottom. I needed to understand the cost of pushing so hard; fighting so hard against the system.

One day I promised God that if he would give me my voice back I would never smoke again. I got three octaves back after quitting.

Once I was a prisoner lost inside myself with the world surrounding me, wandering through the misery, but now I am free. Free to love, free to laugh, free to soar, free to shine, free to give.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully its not a freight train!

I don’t think anyone knows as much about what’s right for me as I do.

True diva could not live without smart remark every now and then, a good sip of water.

If you look inside yourself, and you believe, you can be your own hero.

I definitely feel more complete than before. There’s a void you have when you don’t feel you’ve found the other part of who you are, so I’m in a different place now and that’s nice to experience.

Lord knows dreams are hard to follow, but don’t let anyone tear them away.

If you believe within your soul, just hold on tight and don’t let go! You can make it, make it happen.

Basically, I started singing when I started talking. Music has just been my saving grace my whole life.

I’m not vain, I’m insecure.

I started writing poetry when I was six. I had this teacher who didn’t believe the poems I’d bring in were mine because they were dark and sad. But I wrote about what I experienced in my childhood.

Something in your eyes captured my soul, and every night I see you in my dreams. You’re all I know. I can’t let go.

I’ve seen the real extreme diva behaviour and I don’t think that’s who I am.

It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.

I can assure you that my first and foremost interest is my country. This is not a personal matter. We are not people driven by a wish to be in the government since it is for us the least attractive work, even though we are politicians.

Griefs assured are felt before they come.

I assure you, an educated fool is more foolish than an uneducated one.

Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature.

But hereof be assured, that all is not lawful nor just that is statute by civil laws; neither yet is everything sin before God, which ungodly persons allege to be treason.

Assurance is not to be obtained so much by self-examination as by action.

But assuredly Fortune rules in all things; she raised to eminence or buries in oblivion everything from caprice rather than from well-regulated principle.