I will go out of my way to avoid the shopping crowds and the extreme consumerism - I hate all that.

If you come face to face with some really challenging situations and tragic circumstances - you are going in there with a purpose. You are not going in there as a tourist.

Medicine comes with hope: the hope of having a healthy child, the hope of being able to raise your family.

If I hadn't been a singer, I might have been a photographer or an artist. But it's singing I love. I sing all the time, and I feel really good that I've expressed myself.

We need money to scale up the services that bring medicine to mothers. The United States government's doing that. There's a global fund that's providing money. mothers2mothers provides for mothers who come in who don't have education, who don't have support. mothers2mothers employs mothers with HIV, mothers who were patients recently in the very same facilities. We take those mothers who were patients who've had their babies, we bring them back, we train them, we pay them, to be health care professionals.

I sang a lot as a little girl and entered competitions. I loved singing in choirs, but it was as I got older that I really found my voice.

I think music is the most phenomenal platform for intellectual thought.