Growing around great musicians, you just can't help it. I identified with it immediately. It was something that was so natural to me that when I started singing, it was almost like speaking.

In grammar school some of the girls had problems with me. My face was too light. My hair was too long. It was the black-consciousness period, and I felt really bad.

I was aware of people staring at me. No one moved. They seemed almost in trance. I just stared at the clock in the center of the church. When I finished, everyone clapped and started crying.

When I decided to be a singer, my mother warned me I'd be alone a lot. Basically we all are. Loneliness comes with life.

I wanted to be a teacher. I love children, so I wanted to deal with children. Then I wanted to be a veterinarian. But by the age of ten or eleven, when I opened my mouth and said, 'Oh, God, what's this?' I kind of knew teaching and being a veterinarian were gonna have to wait.

I've always been a thin girl. I'm not going to be fat, ever. Let's get that straight. Whitney is not going to be fat, ever. Okay?

My mother taught me beauty really lives in places like a smile.