Ain't nothing coming easily in this life. Sometimes you gotta work, you gotta grow and it gotta hurt.

To be a queen of a household is a powerful thing.

I'd love to work with Missy Elliott. I'd love to work with Bonnie Raitt. I'd love, love, love to work with Barbra Streisand. I'm reaching, because why not? You don't know what's going to happen in this life.

My mother's a genius. She just kept feeding me art on whatever we had; paper plates, silver platter, didn't matter. You know, she just kept feeding it to me. So we went to see all kinds of theater. We would go to the art museum pretty much every Sunday, and I would watch her. She let me know that art was supposed to touch.

People is, I think, it's their nature - some people's nature, in a way, to be angry or jealous or just spiteful about somebody else's blessings.

I don't necessarily think of myself as a feminist, but I'm a whole person. I'm not just breasts or ass or thighs - I'm a whole being! And it just seems like women aren't necessarily striving to be the whole of themselves.

I believe the relationship you have with your government is not so different to a love relationship.