I love to sing. It's just a natural thing for me.

We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It's our basic human right.

Be your own artist, and always be confident in what youre doing. If youre not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it.

Soul is a constant. It's cultural. It's always going to be there, in different flavors and degrees.

I'm a big woman. I need big hair.

If you disrespect everybody that you run into, how in the world do you think everybody's supposed to respect you?

People really don't have to give you anything, so appreciate what people give you. And just don't let that go to your head, whatever it is they give you.

Don't say Aretha is making a comeback, because I've never been away!

Falling out of love is like losing weight. It's a lot easier putting it on than taking it off.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.

My faith always has been and always will be important to me.

When you look closely to the path you have travel on, you will realise that God was always with you, directing every step you took.

Never send a Man in to do a Donkey's job

Fanscination is what keeps a writer going. To be able to write, a writer has to be fascinated about a particular something that becomes the idea of the story

But the churchmen fain would kill their church, As the churches have kill'd their Christ.

An organism at war with itself is doomed.

When it does not exist, design it.

We didn't used to be so precious about women in comedy back in the old days.

Take the ideas that speak to you. Use your imagination. Create something wonderful.

I always sit in the tail end of a plane, always. You never hear of an plane backing into a mountain.

I got more mail than anybody on the history of The Today Show, but half of it was to get me off the air.