If you're trying to do what's popular now, you're way behind already. By the time you record it and do it and try to copy it, it's moved on.

Having felt people's love and support first hand through difficult moments in my life makes me feel it's our responsibility to help one another.

I'd love to have a program like 'Dr. Laura.' I studied psychology at the University of Miami, and when I rode the bus home from school, perfect strangers would strike up conversations with me and end up telling me their life stories. I think they could sense that I was studying to help people. That, or I have a face like a priest.

I have a very open line of communication with both my children.

I'm a writer and this is what I love to do.

All I tell artists is, 'Do what you love. Never let anybody talk you into changing what your musical idea is just to try to get a hit, because you're chasing your tail that way. It's not going to happen, and if you're successful, you have to do it the rest of your life. Stay true to it and do it for the sake of the art.'

Wherever there's a human being there's going to be somebody that tries to hold you back.