In our culture, I feel like everyone just wants the good life, the dream life, but I'm learning to embrace suffering because with suffering there's so much good that comes out of it.

I really believed music was going to be a big part of my future, and that's why I took a truck driving job, so I could maintain my singing job at night. I put about 30 hours a week just for singing, going between two churches. And in order to afford that, I had to take a full time job so I could do my passion.

Your future is only big enough for you to walk through, not for you and your past to walk through.

I needed to walk through the 'Idol' door to get to the rest of my career.

I make sure that I spend quality time with my family.

I think every time there's a show like 'Modern Family' or 'Will & Grace' that portray gay and lesbian characters and is successful, it just further opens the door.

I have always known my mother as an agnostic, less certain than my father that the universe hadn't been created by some great intelligence. But she would get even more annoyed than my father did when she thought that people were invoking God to do their jobs for them - for example, when she saw a bus with a sticker saying 'Allah Protect Us.'

Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.