I've been shut down, run down, talked about, dogged out, but that never stopped me from the being the true me that's here and will be here.

You’ve got to know business before you go to show business.

I don’t feel as though I have to prove anything to anybody.

I was very shy. I’m still shy.

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.

I’ll perform all the way to the grave.

I’m very spontaneous.

I don’t tweet, Twitter, email, Facebook, look book, no kind of book. I have a land line phone at my home – that’s the only phone I have. If my phone rang every day like everyone else around me, I would lose my mind.

I just sing the stuff that makes me smile, makes me feel like I didn’t sell myself out.

All I do is stay in the kitchen and cook. I don’t go there to party.