That's the message I want to give to every up-and-coming artist: Do everything that is going to help you later. If you clone somebody else, that's all they're gonna keep wanting from you.

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.

The problem with doing nothing is that you never know when you're finished.

Poor Mexico so far from God and so near to the United States.

When I look at someone's face, I look beyond that face and into the cellular memory in my heart that says, 'Finally you and I have met again. And now we must find out why'.

You know, not even your British Queen is called just Elizabeth - she's Elizabeth the Second. There's only one Imelda.

We cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves.

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.

I have never given all of myself, even vocally, to anyone. I was taught to sing on your interest, not your capital.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

When tea becomes ritual, it takes place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.

I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say.