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.

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?

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.

Better friends than lovers. Sugar can't you see? You need you and I really need me.

Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.

Rights and empowerment are interconnected: unless a substantial number of women in a community come to believe that they have rights and demand to exercise them, right remains an abstraction.

Pampered content is a public resignation of artistic integrity.

Laughter is an instant vacation.

I couldn't really see the point of having lunch unless it started at 1:00 and ended a week later in Monte Carlo.

I have to do a show which is of interest to me, or else I'm lost.

Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.

I will absolutely give my [tax] return, but I'm being audited now for two or three years, so I can't do it until the audit is finished, obviously.

One paints from nature not in order to copy, but to express feelings of grandeur.

My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear: That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where.