“What happens is once you start to understand football, you realise that it’s not just about the physical side of the game and chasing after a ball. It’s a strategic sport which requires a lot of intelligence. It’s a very mental game.”

I think, if you can prove the existence of God, it can only be proven through love.

I thank God that I’m a product of my parents. That they infected me with their intelligence and energy for life, with their thirst for knowledge and their love. I’m grateful that I know where I come from.

I like to see people’s eyes when I’m singing to them.

Gerard and I pretty much share all parenting responsibilities, although I’m definitely the disciplinarian.

I’m Colombian and nothing will change that.

Sensual is everything that refers to the delight of the senses. And that’s what artists do, is stimulate the senses in any possible way.

You’re a song written by the hands of God.

I tried to give my career a shot from Barranquilla, but the musicians would never show up. It was just not taken seriously.

The worst mistake of a woman is to go to the kitchen, because then she never gets out of there.

My man, Gerard, prefers meat over bone. That takes the pressure off. I already have a lot to worry about.

I admire a person who, for the love of art, is able to take off their clothes in front of a camera. But I’m not capable, I’m too cowardly for that.

So I like the work he’s doing, and I support it, and I realise that he’s one of very few political leaders around the world that actually has early-childhood development strategise at the top of his agenda.

In this life, to earn your place you have to fight for it.

My therapist taught me why I behave in certain ways and not to feel so pressured.

I am a person who has many dreams. But as soon as I accomplish one, I move on to the next. That’s my fatal, absurd nature. Human beings are slaves to our dreams, and I am, too. Now I think I just want to share my musical proposal in its entire form.

I always knew that I was tremendously creative. I recited love poems, I wrote stories and I got excellent grades in every subject, except for maths.

Once again, America finds itself with some leaders who believe we can ignore the world without consequences here at home. Apparently they’re oblivious to the reality that we are less insulated from global events than ever before.

When you’re growing up, your dad is your superhero. Once you’ve let yourself fall that in love with someone, once you put him on such a high pedestal and he lets you down, you never want to experience that pain again.

Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.

If any such point out to us our follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidence of our wisdom.

You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.

I think hip-hop could help rebuild America, once hip-hoppers own hip-hop… We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say. We’re warriors. Soldiers.

I feel like myself, strong and weak at once – allowed, at least for a little while, to be both.

Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.