I've never recorded anything I didn't like.

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.

You are a great sacred soul.

What worries you, masters you.

Bad movies and bad writing and easy cliches still manage to make us feel things toward each other. Part of me is disgusted by this. Part of me celebrates it.

I cried because I was so beautiful.

Steadfastness is a noble quality, but unguided by knowledge or humility, it becomes rashness, or obstinacy.

Cowardece is often just another name for being taken by surprise.

In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought.

The best way to kill someone is from the inside, by crushing their hopes and dreams.

Change your words into truths and then change that truth into LOVE.

Poetry has never brought me in enough money to buy shoestrings.