At a really young age, I decided I was never going to feel helpless, I was never going to feel weak around a man, and I was never going to rely on anyone.

I'm an ocean, because I'm really deep. If you search deep enough you can find rare exotic treasures.

So, where's the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?

The female body is something that's so beautiful. I wish women would be proud of their bodies and not diss other women for being proud of theirs.

You can never be too perfect, too thin, too curvy. I'm very confident and happy with my body.

I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl.

I don't think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque.

There was no way in hell I was going to jeopardize my baby for my show.

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.

I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?

I remember watching the Grammys and looking at the performances and crying to my mom, saying how much I wanted to be there.

Effective prayer is prayer that attains what it seeks. It is prayer that moves God, effecting its end.

Clericalism: the habitual confusion between that which is of Caesar, and that of God.

After the children grew up, I began to focus on my writing. My first books were part of a trilogy... The 'Wind Dance' trilogy.

There's always things that you know about that nobody else, because everybody's life is different. So you write about what you know. That's number one.

I take goldenseal, Echinacea and cod liver oil when flying to boost my immune system.

Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.

When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.

The last thing you do the best is what you have the most joy doing.

A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.

The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life.