I think you grow through your experiences; you get better as you grow and I'm not nearly where I think I'm going to be eventually where I inspire to be and hopefully the opportunities will continue to come.

I attribute my talent and my success to God, but I believe that the only way you can manifest what He has ordained for you is by being close to Him and by making it happen. But we have to stay close to Him in order to be an image of Him.

I admire the women who can have babies and jump right back to work. As a nursing mother, I couldn’t sit there and just pump all day. I needed to be close to my baby.

Every woman deserves diamonds, and even if you can't afford to go out and buy diamonds for yourself or you don't have actual stone diamonds, I think when we look at ourselves we should refer to ourselves as a precious stone.

I try to do the same thing when I'm with young actors who are new and unsure. I try to do the same thing for them that I saw Laurence [Fishburne] and Angela [Dasset]do for all of us on Boyz n the Hood.

In talking and communicating, [it's important that we] really share information with one another - because I think that leads to better understanding - and also just kind of [educate] one another in a way that's really honest.

It's hard to judge yourself. Each Essence cover represents a different special moment in my life. One is about keeping it sexy in my 40s, so I'm not mad about that either.