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.
Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
You don’t have a baby based on that publicity madness. People don’t live like that. Especially black people who were raised in families with morals and standards and integrity.
I’ve never felt like this in any other country. I feel at home, I feel wonderful.
I’m tired of people taking off their clothes.
My mother was the first singer I had contact with. She sang constantly to us around the house, in church.
I’ve got some good saints out there – that’s right – that pray for me constantly. You’ve gotta have that! You do.
I’m just fiercely protective. It’s like, that’s my lair and nobody messes with my lair.
I would stay in my room for days, for days at times, just trying to get it together, to know what my next phase was going to be.
Being around people like Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick and Roberta Flack, all these greats, I was taught to listen and observe.
I almost wish I could be more exciting, that I could match what is happening out there to me.
I have priorities. Maintaining my daughter is my first.
You can fool people. You can fool anybody anytime of the day, but you can’t fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you’ve got to be straight up with you.
What’s in your soul is in your soul.
Nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to do. It’s my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy.
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.
I’m proud of being a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a sister, and a lover and a friend We’re all God’s children.
I feel so blessed to just have done what I had done. To be able to just use what God has given me is a blessing. You know, never mind the Grammys, never mind the records, never mind all of that. Just to be able to sing.
I’m a person who has life and wants to live, and always have.
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’m an old-fashioned girl. And I love gospel. I like things that lift me up, inspire me.