Ever since I was younger I wanted to be on stage, singing my songs in a glittering costume. And that happened and is still happening. I have to remember that this is what I wished for and be grateful because there are 500 other girls right behind me ...
I'm a mash-up of everyone. My influences would be Michael Jackson, Brandy, Aaliyah - those types of people. So if you can imagine them - and with me taking them, and then putting my own twist and the influence on it - that's musically what I would so...
I'm a romantic and I kinda believed in this fairy tale. And in some ways I think that's always been to my advantage, because like if you can believe in something great, I feel like you can achieve something great.
I remember I went through a period where I didn't embrace my 'chocolatiness.' I don't know if that's a word, but I didn't embrace my chocolate lifestyle. Just being a chocolate, lovely brown skin girl and being proud of that.
I think if you are going to be a singer, you should sing. If you are going to be a dancer, you should dance. If you are going to do a combination of the two, you should make it very clear when you are singing and very clear when you are dancing.
I understand I'm supposed to be feminine and dainty, but I'm not. There are two sides to the coin. People are more impressed with things that I do because they almost treat you as if you're handicapped if you're a woman... people can be impressed tha...
You're taught that you can keep going in the military. Your point of collapse is not what you thought it was. Your body is built to survive, and when you think you're going to collapse, you still have so much more left in you.
I wear crop tops and stuff, but I genuinely like that style, so it's just has to be genuine. Once you start getting to that world where you're using sexuality to try to propel something, you're losing the moment. You've lost; people are not focusing ...
Up on that stage, my personality changes. I put everything behind me when I perform. My problems don't belong to my fans. I don't put a burden on my audience. I give them 100 percent of my energy.
When I think about somebody like Keira Knightley, whom I don't particularly know, I see somebody who is working hard, really trying to challenge herself and make smart choices in spite of people criticising her size and performances.
I don't know... part of, I suppose, my way out of everything, has been really taking care of myself. I think that comes from an awareness that my children really need me, and they need me to be the healthiest version of myself that I can possibly be.
I think the defining moment in my career is the day that I moved to Nashville - September 1, 2001. That's the biggest step to getting here is making that move. Anything that happens, the wonderful opportunities that happen to you, can't happen until ...
I think certainly after every show I headline, I will be available to the fans. When I'm headlining a show, I don't walk off stage. I'll walk to the front of the stage and sign hats and shirts and tickets for 15 to 30 minutes, until everyone has ever...
Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Sexuality is general, and although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warm. That's the great generosity of women and the great generosity of the creator who worked it out that way, that there are no unila...
The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice.
I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazine...
I do understand that America is a predominantly Christian country. A lot of morals and values are based in Christianity as opposed to Buddhism, which it's not, or Judaism, which it's not, or Islam, which it's definitely not. So I'm not going to lie t...
I've been actually really very pleased to see how much awareness was raised around bullying, and how deeply it affects everyone. You know, you don't have to be the loser kid in high school to be bullied. Bullying and being picked on comes in so many ...
If you are not being bullied all I would say - cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well - is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there's someone in your class that maybe doesn't have a lot of friends, be the person that sits wit...
The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.
