All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

Actually, I didn’t start sweating until I had children.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

Sincerity makes the very least person to be of more value than the most talented hypocrite.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s an expression.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‚I used everything you gave me‘.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn’t afford to pay attention.

My father opened a restaurant. It’s so amazing… it’s so freaking delicious, but I’m telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.

For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It’s enough. I’m enough. My kids are enough.

Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a halfhearted mood, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

Whether I’m running on the beach without my shirt or whether I’m going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner – I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

I’m gonna go hard no matter what because I gotta feed my family, and I gotta feed myself.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

I’d like to think that I’m a calm and sweet person. I tend to be very playful at home with my children, but in life… we have to fight our battles – our work battles, our political battles, our personal battles – and we’re focused.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

When your mother asks, ‚Do you want a piece of advice?‘ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

I believe that every one of us has a gift. And I believe that mine is the ability to take the complex and make it simple.

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.

My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

I think love is one of the purest things you can sing about. One of the best things you can sing about.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.

I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

Let the path be open to talent.

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

Family home evening is more for the purpose of teaching values and gospel principles, displaying talents and enjoying different kinds of family fun and activities.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

An armchair Jungian would say the whole thing is about my own ongoing spiritual search. My interior life has always been one of trying to find a spiritual link, maybe because I’m from a family of separate religious philosophies: Protestant and Catholic.

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

I think that’s something that all mothers have to deal with, especially single mothers. We work, and we have to leave the kids behind. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we, not only as women but as families, we have to advocate for early childhood education for all of our children.

My three children have brought me great joy.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

When I was a kid, I never thought much about football. I thought about following in my family’s footsteps and going into professional wrestling.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.