Tell Aretha I’ll be praying for herBecause she needs Jesus!I love her.

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.

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.

The level of success you achieve will be in direct proportion to the depth of your commitment.

Every act of goodness is born from our desire to be happy.

You and I, God’s ambassadors, are called to sound the warning, to call sinners to repentance, to point the way to peace with God and the hope that is in Christ.

Sometimes I dig holes for people to fall in. Then I shout, “I've got you!

What anybody else thinks about you is really of no consequence. It's what you think of yourself.

The reprisal against the suicide bomber does not bring peace. There is a suicide bomber, a reprisal and then a counter-reprisal. And it just goes on and on.

Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way.

This life is a stellar opportunity to realize what you are, to bring what you first are into manifestation.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.