My family is part Creole, and were Indian, and were also very, very black. My father was so black, he was blue.

Stay cool, stay humble, stay beautiful, and just do the work

I was able to endure and play a special part in music history. And I always managed to keep working, even if I wasnt a big solo artist.

I have always said every good thing is divinely sent from heaven.

I felt like if I just gave my heart to what I was doing, I would automatically be a star.

Carole King is one of my dearest friends. Were like family.

My mother was a lupus patient. I was a child with the lupus gene.

I got put out of my church choir because my pastor said, 'We can't have baby sister singing the blues and coming in here and singing on Sunday morning.'

the hope is smallbut it is everything.

If you’re going to give up after few attempts, bear it in mind that your struggles are going to be wasted.

The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.

I didn't come from a background where I saw a lot of loving couples. All my aunts and uncles were either split up or fighting all the time. The only healthy relationships I saw were on TV.

You don't chose your passion, your passion choses you

the rich are different only because people treat them as if they were.

confidence is a choice ... to act, or to do, or to decide.

I'm determined to be a diva.

One would think that the record of already existing regulatory agencies is sufficiently eloquent in showing that it is Big Business that does the regulating rather than vice versa .

How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.