I wanted to talk about my life. There is so much. I was 18 when I made the record, and I had a lot to say.

I'm convinced that we Black women possess a special indestructible strength that allows us to not only get down, but to get up, to get through, and to get over.

People do see me as sweet and innocent. Not to say that I am not those things. But I have other sides to me.

Competition is great. And as long as it's friendly and not a malicious thing, then I think it's cool.

I don't believe in luck. ... It's persistence, hard work, and not forgetting your dream.

I can be happy with who I am, not what I should be, or what I might have been, or what someone tells me I must be.

Believe in yourself. Have faith in yourself because no one else is going to.

It has taken me most of my adult life to come to terms with who I am. To do that, I had to break free of attitudes that brought me down.

In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

The greatest achievement to any human being is to love God, yourself, and others.

Every body type is different - that's what makes you unique. What makes you special is you, and you are different from the next person.

The sun rises from the two places: From the East and also from where the Science rises!

In modern politics, even the leader of the free world needs help from the sultan of Facebookistan.

I profess to learn and to teach anatomy not from books but from dissections, not from the tenets of Philosophers but from the fabric of Nature.

It's very difficult to get to the truth and ironically, in the Information Age, which we would have thought meant channels to the truth is in fact obfuscating the truth.

Images embrace us: they open up to us and close themselves to us in so far as they conjure up in us something that we could call an interior experience.

I don't suppose there's really any critic except posterity.

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of Eternity.

Life is like a roller coaster- it has its ups and downs but in the end you have smiles and giggles because you know...you did it.

All that is great in man comes through work; and civilization is its product.

I go, I go, look how I go, swifter than an arrow from a bow