[Director Richard Tanne] was inspired by their [Barack and Michelle Obama] flirtation, and their connection. That's not normal with politicians who are married - they usually look forced or awkward.

I was working in customer service and had a verbally abusive boss. One day, I decided to quit and pursue my acting passion with everything I had. One week after quitting, I booked One Life to Live.

I want to do good, and I want people to be happy, and sometimes when youre a people pleaser, you spread yourself too thin.

On a personal level, you wear different masks.

I love Motown, that whole era. Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson. I just put on Pandora, and put it on Motown, and it makes me smile; makes me smile so much.

I'm an actress, model, and singer.

Plow through the weeds. Go to the auditions and go to the meetings and be on time. Stop looking to the left or the right. Keep your head down and keep moving.

I think she [Michelle Obama] is reluctant to date someone she's above at work. It's 1989, she's at a law firm, surrounded by mostly white men, and she has to prove herself every day.

My mom was an opera singer, and she gave up her career to raise a family. But she also taught my sisters how to sing.

At Christmas, it's my siblings running around the house, we're cooking, talking, laughing, loud and just crazy. It's beautiful chaos.

The need for security often kills the quest for innovation.

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

I think people just want to hear good songs and I just want to keep getting better as a writer so that I can deliver good songs.

Perhaps the sketch of a work is so pleasing because everyone can finish it as he chooses.

Don't shave, don't shower, don't care. Be really stinky and wear the same clothes every day. I think what makes a man sexy is not being self-aware. That’s what's really cute to me.

The time has come for someone to put his foot down, and that foot is me.

I'm not commercial, I'm not for Special K cereal and I'm not a Wheaties boy; I'm a little bit more avant-garde, a little bit more out there.

Our lives are rivers, gliding free to that unfathomed, boundless sea, the silent grave!

I didn't write about aspects of my public life because that's a small part of my life.

I do hope having done what I did, and America having accepted me the way they did, opens the door for more global talent, which should have representation in global entertainment.