“Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.”

I was aware of people staring at me. No one moved. They seemed almost in trance. I just stared at the clock in the center of the church. When I finished, everyone clapped and started crying.

God gave me a voice to sing with, and when you have that, what other gimmick is there?

I finally faced the fact that it isn’t a crime not having friends. Being alone means you have fewer problems.

I think over the years, being a mother, I’ve matured in so many ways.

I’ve turned down a lot of arena dates because I’ve done the big-arena thing. Now, I want to do something where people can feel me and I can feel them.

I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy.

Never let your heart take precedence over reason, otherwise you will have problems.

Being around people like Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick and Roberta Flack, all these greats, I was taught to listen and observe.

If you say my eyes are beautiful, it’s because they are looking at you.

No one makes me do anything I don’t want to do.

What’s in your soul is in your soul.

She’s my teacher, my adviser, my greatest inspiration.

In grammar school some of the girls had problems with me. My face was too light. My hair was too long. It was the black-consciousness period, and I felt really bad.

I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside.

My mother taught me beauty really lives in places like a smile.

Growing around great musicians, you just can’t help it. I identified with it immediately. It was something that was so natural to me that when I started singing, it was almost like speaking.

My mum’s always on at me to have children and blames ‘that stupid stage thing you do’ for me not already having a family.

Breaking things as a child seemed so easy, than fixing broken things as a adult.

I had a very positive, wonderful, happy upbringing, and still, for several reasons, I really didn’t enjoy being a child very much. I felt that I had no control over my life and everything seemed scarier and larger than life.

My #1 driving force is my lord and savior Jesus Christ. Also my family, my wife and children.

If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors.

I believe that children are our future

I have seven children by six different mothers. Maybe success was too good to me.

My dreams as a kid were so far below the Grammys, like, maybe selling out a show, or, like, seeing your album on a shelf in an Urban Outfitters… and the Grammys are so far above that. It’s very ridiculous.