“Learning to love yourself, is the greatest love all.”

When I heard Aretha, I could feel her emotional delivery so clearly. It came from down deep within. That’s what I wanted to do.

I would stay in my room for days, for days at times, just trying to get it together, to know what my next phase was going to be.

From the beginning, the camera and I were great friends. It loves me, and I love it.

Nobody likes to be picked on. Nobody.

I’m not crazy about arenas just because I can sell them out. It doesn’t do anything for my ego at all. I want to play places where people don’t have to sit in the nosebleed seats and wonder what the hell is going on.

I’m proud of being a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a sister, and a lover and a friend We’re all God’s children.

I’d rather be alone than unhappy

I believe the children are our future

I feel so blessed to just have done what I had done. To be able to just use what God has given me is a blessing. You know, never mind the Grammys, never mind the records, never mind all of that. Just to be able to sing.

If I should die this very day, Don’t cry…cause on Earth We wasn’t meant to stay.

I’m a person who has life and wants to live, and always have.

My mother taught me that when you stand in the truth and someone tells a lie about you, don’t fight it.

I wish to you, joy and happiness. But above all this, I wish you love

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?

It is time to realize we are too great a nation for small dreams. We’re not – as some would have us believe – doomed to an inevitable fate.

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

My greatest ambition is to have a career without becoming a career woman.

We will be relentless in our pursuit for perfection. We won’t ever be perfect – but in the process we will achieve greatness.

Fight every chance you can to be you. Don’t let them intimidate you. Authenticity is greatness.

Yoga is a great thing and meditation is also great to get connected to yourself more.

Greatness pulls mediocrity into the mud. Get out there and get after it.

The price of failure is just too great to imagine.