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

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.

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.

Every exit is an entrance to someplace else.

Positive thinking is the sword of life.

If I let myself care, all I'll feel is pain.

I do not have bad days. I don't wake up in the morning and think that I'm going to get AIDS. I don't dream bad dreams about it. If I did, I'd be giving in to the negativity.

She remembered when they were kids and he'd caught the rock that the bullies had thrown at her. At six, she'd considered him a hero. At sixteen, she considered him a heartbreaker.

God blesses his people with extravagant grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all peoples on the earth

When I was very young every grownup was a hero. It's been all downhill since then, and I have only two left.

The killer looked up as the bullet hit him. He looked as if he were puzzled by some strange occurence, being too freshly dead to be aware of it.

It's God - I recognised him from Blake's picture.

I had not yet learned that we make our own destiny, it springs from within us. It is not the outward events but what we allow ourselves to make of them that count.

Forgot the blush that virgin fears impart To modest cheeks, and borrowed one from art.