I've always thought of myself as being a warrior. When you actually have a battle, it's better than when you don't know who to fight.

It didn't matter as much because I'm a singer, not an actress, but my face is more acceptable in a way now than when I first came on the scene, because I'm part black.

I grew up not understanding what was true and what was not true. It gave me a sense of unreality. I was told that this man [mom's lover] was not my mother's lover - when he was. I was told he was there as a male babysitter for my brother so that he would learn sports and other manly things.

I haven't got time for the pain.

It's like The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat, about the discovery of penicillin. Out of these strange accidents come huge discoveries. A certain purple bleeds into red and all of a sudden you have something unexpected.

You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds, but soon you'll cage me on your shelf. I'll never learn to be just me, first by myself.

Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music...I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing.