That's the message I want to give to every up-and-coming artist: Do everything that is going to help you later. If you clone somebody else, that's all they're gonna keep wanting from you.

I mean, I know my heart is not clean, and your heart is not clean, and none of our urban hearts are clean. But you can be washed again.

The streets respect me because I kept it real with me. You gotta be real with yourself, and the streets recognize game.

I believe there are certain things that God uses to get us out of a bad situation, and I believe music was one of the things he used for me.

The important thing is to realize that no matter what people's opinions may be, they're only just that - people's opinions. You have to believe in your heart what you know to be true about yourself. And let that be that.

I like what I see when I'm looking at me when I'm walking past the mirror.

I don't know what kind of God the rest of y'all are serving, but the God I serve says, 'Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I'm gonna make sure you're doing that.'