So if diva means giving your best, then yes, I guess I am a diva.

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.

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

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.

You are giving up nothing! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

As to writing another book on geometry [to replace Euclid] the middle ages would have as soon thought of composing another New Testament.

The Palestinian people's needs must be respected.

It is my belief that children are full of understanding and know as much as and more than adults, until they are about seven, when they suddenly become stupid, like adults.

A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

The people were simpler, more peaceable and friendly in their manners and dispositions; and assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a reputation, were almost unknown.

It is good to be Compared with the best player [Pele]. But my dad told me about Garrincha's style as he moved forward, went up, attacked and dribbled. Garrincha's style is more similar to Neymar's.

Our whole educational and cultural system is not designed to provide those intellectual tools, so people are often lost and the internet often becomes kind of a cult generator.

I do have the power. I can decide for myself what I want, even if the thought stresses me out.

At one time in my career, Barnes and Noble bookstores categorized my books as religious fiction.