When you're famous, no one looks at you as a human anymore. You become the property of the public.

I think I've realized that business and being polite [don't] match. You can be fair, but me being polite was not me being fair to myself.

I'm always happy when I'm surrounded by water, I think I'm a Mermaid or I was a mermaid. The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective… it humbles you and makes you feel almost like you’ve been baptized. I feel born again when I get out of the ocean.

Acting is easier and smoother than singing - it's less drama.

I was so shy and when my sister was born I found it hard. I was really strange and kind of too quiet.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny's Child put out 'Independent Women,' and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn't a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change.