I love being a mommy, and I love being an artist, and I love being a singer and an actress and making a movie - all that stuff I feel very passionate about, so I have a lot of energy for it.

I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.

I've been writing songs all my life. My mom said I wrote my first song when I was two.

I've been dancing all my life and studied at Joffrey Ballet when I was 13 and singing all my life.

Many immigrants do not talk about what they endured back home. They were fleeing that world, and when they left they didn't want to talk about it because there had been pain and heartbreak under the caste system of the South. They didn't want to burden their children with what they had endured.

I was so angry at God for taking my father from me that I marched up to my mother before the funeral and told her I was going to quit nursing school. I just wanted to stop living.

A loving mother-son relationship is always a plot or outwitting of some kind. 'Don't tell anyone, but...' my mother was always saying to me - when I wasn't saying it to her.

I just have a lot of respect for Terry and his family. He played without a mask, and his life was tragically ended. And it just means a lot to me to be up there with him and the other greats that have played that long.