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

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.

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.

Every exit is an entrance to someplace else.

Don't give up. It's just the weight of the world.

Destiny is a stubborn maiden. She likes herself just the way she is.

Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners.

American socialism had lost momentum even before the war. (Socialist leader Norman Thomas received 885, 000 votes in his 1932 run for the presidency, but only 187, 500 in 1936.)

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

Memories, priceless. Well not really priceless, but there you go!

He is in my soul and i am in his, and we are in bed but we are in a desert, and i do not know where he begins and i end - Mac

Dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri.

Creation is a process that is still happening and we’re in on it! We are a part of this endless creativity of God.

There was a time when I used to go to Mexico every year. But then Mexico changed a lot - between 1995 and 2005, Mexico changed a lot.