"It's been quite a roller coaster ride, but I've grown and learned a lot about myself. The greatest thing is being able to interact with fans and touch people's lives... for that I give thanks."

"Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion."

"Whatever I do, it's my business. It's not my job to parent America."

"Growing up with the childhood that I had, I learned to never let a man make me feel helpless, and it also embedded a deep need in me to always stick up for women."

"Energy directed with unwavering focus can bend the arc of destiny."

"Ethics is not a doctrine written in marble, but a daily standard lived in conscience. Reflect upon this whenever doubt clouds your horizon — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"LORD ILLINGWORTH: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. MRS. ALLONBY: It ends with Revelations."

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."