I care about me now. When I didn't care about me, I was, like, 'Why is this going wrong? Why is my life so bad?' But when you don't care about yourself, nobody else is going to care about you. So I learned to love myself, even if nobody else does.

I believe that anything man himself can do for me, God can do for me in a greater way. I decided to pray and to seek God on my own. I just stayed in The Word. And it worked.

From being a little girl in the projects, going through all of the mess that I was going through, to ending up at the Inauguration for the first African-American president, I'm speechless right now because I never thought I'd - I never ever - I couldn't even see that far. Even when I ended up in the music business I couldn't see that.

No one compares to you. Just remember that. There's no one out there - there's only one of you, and that's it. And whatever you believe about you that's great, no one else has it. And I can't look like you, there's no way I can slip into your body and be you, and you can't slip into my body and be me. This is all we're gonna get.

The younger Mary J. Blige, I would call her, she was very unaware, ignorant.

The fact is that everyone at the labels wants to do what everyone else is doing. You have to look like her; you have to be like her; you have to sing like her, and no one can express themselves. I look at Rihanna and I am so proud of her. She speaks loudly! You have to stand up and clap. She expresses herself through fashion. She actually can sing. And her songs mean something, even to me, you know?

God comes first - if I don't love him, I can't love anybody, and if I can't love me I can't love nobody.