I clean my house, although I have help. I'm on the floor getting spots. I can't stand a dirty house. I'm a cleaning fanatic.

I can't do some of the songs that younger girls like Mary J. Blige and Beyonce are doing. They have their own place and I have my own place.

I know how to put it on when it comes to interviews and performing because I have to. But I'm pretty laid back.

Tell Aretha I’ll be praying for herBecause she needs Jesus!I love her.

All I can tell you really is if you get to the point where someone is telling you that you are not great or not good enough, just follow your heart and don't let anybody crush your dream.

So if anybody wants to get me something, get me 60 crabs - one for each year. I don't want no diamonds, I don't want no shoes, I don't want no party. I want some crabs.

God doesn't do the work for you; he does the work through you. It's not enough to look up; you must also look within.

That's another lesson I've learned the hard way. All relationships will die if they aren't nurtured. Just as a flower will die if it's not watered. Because love is demonstration, not declaration.

I don't feel as though I have to prove anything to anybody.

So if diva means giving your best, then yes, I guess I am a diva.

I just sing the stuff that makes me smile, makes me feel like I didn't sell myself out.

A man who looks like Frodo just spent $150 on erotica books and asked for my phone number. I considered giving him yours just to spite you.

Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.

There are very few things you can really do [to promote] healthy aging ... and none of these things include an insurance system or a legal system. All those things do is change who pays.

Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.

It's a small percentile of people who see one dime out of the music business.

Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver.

How right- how incredibly, utterly right- and how impossible!

Paradise is surrounded by what we dislike; the fires of hell are surrounded by what we desire.

The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

Read not for the facts but for the angles of thinking.