I've always been more in control of my professional life than my personal life. Although I'm a strong woman, when I fall in love I just give myself 100 percent. I become secondary.

It's not right to believe that the only way you're gonna get a job and the only way you're gonna get a man or be happy is by being so skinny.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

I believe that your own thoughts can bring on positive or negative effects. So the people who feel sick all the time are the ones who are going to get sick, and the people who are constantly worried about what's going on around them... those are the ones in trouble.

I was given the opportunity to write the kind of book that I wanted to write, rather than one that catalogues where I sang and what I sang and what I wore. I wanted to write a book about an American family, the family that has produced me. The longer I live, the more I realise the incredible support and love we were given as children.

What happens in the context of war is that, in order for you to make a child into a killer, you destroy everything that they know, which is what happened to me and my town. My family was killed, all of my family, so I had nothing.

Balancing family and work is a top priority for me, and I treat it as such. Meaning, I actually put specific family time and events in my calendar so that precious time is dedicated and properly blocked off from any work that may try to sneak its way into my schedule.

I had to learn my faith and look after my family, and I had to make priorities. But now I've done it all and there's a little space for me to fill in the universe of music again.