I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

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.

Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

In memory, you can access something from the past, anything that you've experienced that you remember - it's there. Now, you might have a memento of it in a photograph or in a film or a building or some clothes that you wore. There might be something that connects you to this memory. But all of us are just all caught in this time, whatever that is.

I'm not a saint. I'm not an angel. I'm a human being.

You become really ugly when you become very superficial and self-obsessed.

Music is a great vehicle for communications, and I have a certain platform. I have an opportunity and I have to take it.