Whenever I get to talk to young girls like me I always say, 'The only difference between you and I is that I know that I'm special and you just don't know that you are yet.'

Sometimes, when you grow up in one of these poverty-stricken neighborhoods where the educational system isn't the best, you don't realize that you have any choices. Often, kids don't appreciate the choices available, as if it's either the street or nothing. I want them to understand that reality is what's relative to you, and that you can make choices that allow you to create a new reality for yourself.

You can do anything as long as you don't stop believing. When it is meant to be, it will be. You just have to follow your heart.

I definitely, at times, felt the pressures of life similar to the pressures anyone would feel growing up. The only difference was that maybe more people were aware of mine. But, if anything, I changed the pressure from negative to positive. So, instead of thinking everybody wanted to see me fail, I decided everybody wanted to see me win, since I wanted to see myself win.

Corbin Bleu was my first kiss in life. I was 12, and he was, like, my first kiss for TV... It was on the lips!

Giving back, doing motivational speeches and stuff like that, that's always made me feel good. If you repeatedly go out there, and you are the change that you want to see, then that's what you are.

We need to stop separating ourselves by how dark or how light we are.