I pray to be the best thing ever but I also pray that for my colleagues. You're only as good as the person who can distract from what's meant to be happening.

I feel like I go from strength to strength. What exists in between is the stuff that makes it worth it. I don't know what a triumph is unless I know what a failure is. I welcome both in equal measure because I know they're both temporary anyway. I know they're both unavoidable anyway.

Sometimes we depersonalize people who we don't agree with or who we see as targets for hatred. If you think of anything as having a mother, that's going to change everything. All of us have mothers and came from a womb. Buddha says you can't hate anything you understand.

Opera contains music that reflects a culture of poetry and aesthetic. Spirituals are no different. What separates a spiritual for me is that I also happen to love Jesus. When I'm approaching these songs, I'm not approaching them like Mozart. I see my faith and the struggle of my ancestors and of a people seeking freedom beside what these songs are going to be in terms of their arrangement and delivery.

People feel that you'll never be able to recreate the birthplace of a song that has, at its core, the hardship of a people. Unless you underwent the respect that it takes to appropriate those songs through a ritual, then perhaps you should think twice before simply picking them up.

I pray to be the best thing ever but I also pray that for my colleagues. You're only as good as the person who can distract from what's meant to be happening.

Belief is a choice. Not everyone is going to love Jesus. I'm not asking them to. I'm not asking them to come on the same spectrum as me. No matter where you fall on the faith spectrum, the spiritual can instill a sense of hope in you that's undeniable. The spiritual doesn't ask you to believe any one thing. It just opens you up.