While other kids played with cars and toys, I listened to music all day. I wanted to sing it and learn it.

I just want to say that dreams do come true. Don't ever give up on your dreams. Sometimes it just takes a little bit longer for some of us.

You have to give love to get love.

I've been influenced heavily by great soul artists. I see myself as a soul singer. I sing from my soul - I write from my soul.

I don't like labels, but I do have blue eyes and I'm soulful, so what am I going to do?

I write songs like "The Sweetest Love." Of course I'm a little cheesy. Love is cheesy. Love is corny. But it's also the greatest feeling in the whole world.

Some people go to college. For me I studied music my whole life. That was my college.

I really try to wake up with my music the same as I do with my life, and that is with no expectations. I just feel what I feel that day and follow it.

My songs don't play on pop radio; they play on black radio.

I was seven years old the first time I saw Michael Jackson. That changed everything.

I grew up in a Hollywood family with money, so money is not the reason I make music. I'm as Hollywood as it gets. Not internally but externally - that's my bloodline.

There is room in the smallest cottage for a happy loving pair.

Now, personally, I like a car with some sort of character.

I was a first time bride at 44. I had never even lived with anybody. And after running my own business for many years, I knew how to be the boss - but I had no idea how to be a good partner.

John Kerry had surgery on his right shoulder this week to repair some damage. It was pretty bad, he had no feeling. It was almost like he was a Republican.

I can't be the candy queen forever.

Personally I've never put much store by honesty- I mean how can you trust a word whose first letter you don't even pronounce

My number one thing is to recycle everything from newspaper to aluminum cans, and I even use a canvas bag instead of the plastic ones when I go to the grocery store.

I want to be able to control things and that's very difficult to do if you're not 100% in a particular language. It makes you uncertain and it makes you nervous.

When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.

There are no short cuts to Heaven, only the ordinary way of ordinary things.