When I heard Aretha, I could feel her emotional delivery so clearly. It came from down deep within. That's what I wanted to do.

Being around people like Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick and Roberta Flack, all these greats, I was taught to listen and observe.

I wanted to be a teacher. I love children, so I wanted to deal with children. Then I wanted to be a veterinarian. But by the age of ten or eleven, when I opened my mouth and said, 'Oh, God, what's this?' I kind of knew teaching and being a veterinarian were gonna have to wait.

I feel safe in white because deep down inside, I'm an angel.

Deep down, my mom had long suspected I was gay... Much of her anger and hurt came from her sense of betrayal that she was the last to be told.

Deep within, they are stained with the filth of emotional attachment to Maya, they deal in Maya alone.