Make sure that nobody is following you.
I can't do some of the songs that younger girls like Mary J. Blige and Beyonce are doing. They have their own place and I have my own place.
There's not much longevity in music today. It's so easy to go in, put some pretentious lyrics on, with people saying the same thing over and over and over.
I keep showing decade after decade that I am a real performer.
I love Canadians because I don't see very much racism in Canada.
Women are strong now. Women are dominating the charts, and women are doing it for themselves. We're kicking butt and taking no prisoners.
Whenever I go out, so many people who respect me ask me what to do in a certain situation. A lot of times, I didn't know the answers because sometimes I was going through the same sort of thing. But then later on, I would think of things that people told me.
I placed over a thousand deaf people in jobs throughout my career working for the deaf.
Life and the environment are one thing, not two, and people, as all life, are immersed in the one system. When we influence nature, we influence ourselves; when we change nature, we change ourselves.
The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.
In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea.