I have never gotten into the label thing.

All of a sudden I feel more womanly, I feel like I got a figure. I was always really straight up and down, the skinny one in the middle, like that poster at Elaine's of the Supremes at Lincoln Center - it was done by Joe Eula. To me that's really a reflection of the way I was. I was just like a bean pole. Now I'm getting a few curves and I like it.

It takes a long time to get to be a diva. I mean, you gotta work at it.

You can't just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream. You've got to get out there and make it happen for yourself.

My travels led me to where I am today. Sometimes these steps have felt painful, difficult, but led me to greater happiness and opportunities.

A reporter once asked me if I ever cried. I wonder if people think I'm just as hard as a rock and have no emotions at all.

I'm from a singing family, but they're not professional singers, only gospel - my grandfather was a minister. I started to sing the music that was out then because my mother used to play it all the time. It was the end of the '50s, the beginning of the '60s. There was Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers, Etta James... We used to sit outside on the stoop and sing. We even used to put our radios and record players outside.