It's OK showing yourself some love.

When someone comes up to me and says, 'Mary, you helped save my marriage', or, 'Mary, you helped me get out of this abusive relationship', I'm in it, really in their lives. And I'm so passionate about my feelings, but also about showing people the way through theirs.

You can look at my palm and see the storm coming. Read the book of my life and see I've overcome it.

Love is wonderful, amazing, and the best thing that can happen to us.

As a child I always wanted to be a singer. The music my mother played in the house moved me - Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Mahalia Jackson. It was truly spiritual. It made you understand what God was. We are all spirits. We get depressed. But music makes you want to live. I know my music has saved my life.

It hurts a lot when you cannot really comprehend what a person is saying in a meeting, or you don't even understand what you're reading in your contract.

The only person that I'm really feeling - because she has an identity of her own, even though she has listened to Mary J. Blige - is Jill Scott.