I think, a lot of times as women, we feel pressure from our parents, our friends: we see our friends get married.

I remember, as a kid, my first breakup at 14 years old, I was jamming to Toni Braxton trying to heal out here. Why did an angel break my heart? Hell, I don't know.

Me and my sister and my best friend get on the phone every morning and pray about different things. Even if we can't talk, because both of them have kids and I'm on the road, we shoot each other texts. 'What can I pray for you today?' It's a wonderful feeling knowing that you have women of God praying for you. There's nothing like that.

Music has healed me on so many different occasions, and I want my music to be able to do that for someone else.

When grief is deepest, words are fewest.

I'm not a luddite. Science, computers, medicine, they're all great. But nature is context. That which we can't control. Its constant mortality and immortality is an answer to the terror of finite existence. It reassures the soul.

To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it means to many fortunate human beings - travels in warm climes. To still others, who again have their human prototypes, it means a struggle, more or less fierce, to keep soul and body together; while to many insect forms, it means death.

Like so many of us, I'm brokenhearted about the death of the remarkably talented actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.