After every storm, if you look hard enough, a rainbow appears.
I love all holiday music. My two favorites would probably be Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” and Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song.” They epitomize Christmas for me. Those two recordings will never be touched. That’s why I’ve never redone them.
I’m not great at putting my hair into a bun, but I’ll do it if I have to.
I can do a reddish-brown or brown lip, but not a bright red. I just don’t look good in it. Over the years you learn certain things that don’t look good on you, and that’s one of them for me.
All I want for Christmas is you.
Everybody out there, don’t ever take anybody for granted, ’cause you never know when you might lose them and you may never get the chance to tell them how you really feel.
Don’t say she takes it all for granted I’m well aware of all I have Don’t think that I am disenchanted Please understand.
I had no idea how to handle what was going on. It was all of them against me. They had planned it. They fooled me into thinking they actually liked me.
In the beginning of our time together I was walking on eggshells. Then it became a bed of nails, and then a minefield. I never knew when or what would make him blow, and the anxiety was relentless.
I was barely conscious but my standards were still awake.
And there is a lot of respect due to him. He was a visionary music executive who fearlessly and ferociously dragged his visions into reality. He believed in me, ruthlessly. “You’re the most talented person I’ve ever met,” he would say to me. “You can be as big as Michael Jackson.
My father taught me that words have meaning and thus, they have power.
Time has shown me there is no benefit in trying to protect people who never tried to protect me.
Some of us need to be rescued, but everyone wants to be seen.
Let it all dissipate And I tried to forget As I closed my eyes.
I know life can be so tough And you feel like giving up But you must be strong Baby just hold on You’ll never find the answers if you throw your life away I used to feel the way you do Still I had to keep on going.
Protect your dreams.
My siblings and my mother wouldn’t communicate for most of the year, so by Christmas dinner my brother and sister would come stuffed with hurt and anger, starving for attention. Eventually, inevitably, they would all explode in a torrent of verbal abuse. I would sit there in the center of the chaos, crying and wishing: wishing they would stop screaming, wishing my mother could stop them from screaming and cursing. Wishing I could be somewhere safe and merry – somewhere that felt like Christmas.
I was too excited to be self-conscious – at that point in life, my ambition was stronger than my shame. Who cared if I arrived a little hungry and a little shabby?
Most record executives just didn’t know how they would work my record. They weren’t sure it could “cross over.” But for the record, Teena Marie never cared about crossing over. And I didn’t want to cross over either. I wanted to transcend.