Once you climb to another level, you have to figure out how to sustain it.

I know who I am. I am not perfect. I'm not the most beautiful woman in the world. But I'm one of them.

I listen to gospel music.

I don't know. Only God knows where the story ends for me, but I know where the story begins. It's up to us to choose, whether we win or lose and I choose to win.

I have to have lemon and honey. I have to have apple cider vinegar, Braggs. And I have to have either Red Vines or Twizzlers. These things, you know, are the things that help my vocal performance.

There's so many things that life is, and no matter how many breakthroughs, trials will exist and we're going to get through it. Just be strong.

If you're looking for inner peace from the outside world, you're not going to get that. The inner peace starts with looking at you from the inside.

Negative words are powerful boomerangs so be careful what you say about people and yourself.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

Believe in yourself when nobody else does.

When life is real, it's not going to be smooth.

I am not afraid... I was born to do this.

God appreciates ordinary people

It’s time to stop dreaming about who you want your son to be and help him become the healthy, happy, and successful man he’s supposed to be.

Don't you know Yet? It is your light that lights the World.

Rather than evoke our sympathy, our familiarity with the lives of the black poor has bred spasms of fear and outright contempt. But mostly it's bred indifference.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done. [Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie; maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]

Whenever other worlds invite us, whenever we are balancing on the boundaries of our limited human condition, that’s where life starts, that’s where you start feeling yourself living.

Most years, if you were to ask me how much I make, the genuine answer is that I have no clue. I usually find out the answer to that question once a year, at tax time, when my accountant tells me.

The ifs and buts of history...form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet.