I'm glad that I get to take my final walk as the princess of 2012. ...there's nothing wrong with winning an Oscar!

I was always a closet lover of acting. My mom was very practical. She never, ever restricted our dreams, always told us we could do or be anything. Then I said, 'Maybe I want to be an actor.' And she said, 'Maybe not that.'

I just know that the one thing that we all have in common is challenges. No one lives a challenge free life.

God in my mind gives you what you need. So, if you need God to be a black woman and you need that for whatever your reasons are, then perhaps your blessings will come in that form.

I have always been very family-oriented. I came from a dysfunctional, broken family growing up, and it's probably instilled in me the need and the want to have a strong family and a great foundation. So I think that is something that I naturally gravitate toward.

Even in my music, I am always searching for big, universal things - ways that you can sort of reach outside the norm of what you are doing.

I think that young women and little girls need to see that they don't have to be the damsel in distress. They don't have to not show their strength. They don't have to be whatever the stereotype is or the tropes that we go to in our minds.