My mom was my main influence growing up, and Phylicia Rashad reminded me a lot of my mother, just the way she handled certain things, she was... not soft-spoken but smooth-spoken. Just very calm, cool, collected about things.

My mother wouldn't allow me to speak slang when I was growing up. But when I got outside, around my friends, it was 'Yo' and 'That's the joint' and 'Yo, what's up?' So I had my game for my friends and my game for my mom.

Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.

When I was growing up, there were so many musicals you could watch. I like the fantasy of musicals and I love music.

I think everybody's trying to get to a place in themselves where they conquer what they was afraid of; they achieve some of their life goals, kept their word about what they were trying to do.

When I first started out, there were times I would dress or act in a way because I thought it was expected of me or that people would take me more seriously. But once I started leading in a way that was authentically me, that is when I really started to see success.

The whole of the hydrogen on the earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star.

The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval.