The international music scene has grown so much, and America is sort of following that.

You talk to people and they seem really nice and then you read what they write and it's very disillusioning. You have to deal with how people let you down in terms of that. Because I think I'm basically a nice person and I think I'm a real person, and a lot of people aren't.

If critics have problems with my personal life, it's their problem. Anybody with half a brain would realize that it's the charts that count.

True diva could not live without smart remark every now and then, a good sip of water.

One doesn't remain a teenager forever.

My father identified as a black man. No one asked him because he was clearly black. But people always ask me. If we were together, people would look at us in a really strange way. It sucked. As a little girl I had blond hair and they'd look at me, look at him, and be disgusted.

We've been expected to be perfect but we aren't. We're still human.