I wanted to do Playboy to get across the same ideas I'm singing and writing about these days. It's all about proving that a woman can defy stereotypes.

There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality. We live in a culture where the beauty of black people isn't always as celebrated as other types. I'd like to help change that if I can!

When you're a girl, passion can dominate the equation, but as you grow up relationships evolve. Mad passion can grab you at first, but it can't last forever.

I used all that doubt as fuel for my own music, fuel for my drive to succeed.

The time was ripe for Flower. The vibe was right.

In some cases I feel like they haven't appreciated enough that growing up doesn't mean boring and old and not full of life. I like to talk about that also.

I'll put candles all over the room, then light then, and get to it. I call it my 'vibe in a bag.'

Flower was a good metaphor for growth. The song is obviously about sexual responsibility, so that was the main metaphor. Also, it's like knowing who someone has been and remembering and appreciating that, but really appreciating what they are now even more.

Maybe with your emotions and your feelings, someone else can say it in a different way than you would, which brings new life to the way you might sing it.

Eventually you can get into the nuts and bolts of reality: nurturing, caring, and getting along.

I always make this joke that I know you were expecting to see the big skirts and the hoops. But that was a long time ago. Artists aren't always seen as real people. If you start out as a teenager, sometimes people want to keep you locked as that. But I'm a woman now.

The music business is very hard on women over 22. You really have to prove yourself every time you make a record. Are you as vibrant as you used to be? Are you as sexy? So I really want to prove that a woman in her 30s can be all those things and more.

If I've learned anything in this business, it's that you have to be fearless.

Passion has always been important to me. That won't change. What changes in a woman's perspective. I mean, I have two kids now. I'm a single parent balancing motherhood and my career. That changes the equation.

Right now I'm single. Single, and loving it.

I wanted to do Playboy to get across the same ideas I'm singing and writing about these days. It's all about proving that a woman can defy stereotypes.

Don't wait on approval, validation and likes from others - always give yourself the highest of approval ratings and work from there. Hold your head up and be fabulous no matter what!

The multiplicity of ideas is what I'm interested in.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

While a lab Director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community.

I think a good MP is someone who cares for their community and becomes their champion, which is why I will make my home in any seat I am lucky enough to be selected for. Looks play no part in the equation, what matters is your ideas and connecting them to the electorate.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

The new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.

Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age.

Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.

We finally found out the technique of separating and getting information about where every train would be at any moment. Of course, I went over budget many times, because - as you go along - some things improved, and you get better ideas.

It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

I think I am too interested in my own ideas to copy anyone else's, but I find that other people's imagery, the flow of language in the outside world, games with words, and ideas about relationships are all most important to me.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests - let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

When I don't have any ideas, I pick up fabric and start working with it and something happens.

There are some who are scared by unity and by building a country on the basis of ideas.

I have this problem in the rebirthing community because it's so powerful sometimes, I get thrown out because people want to do things a certain way and they are just not open to new ideas, so they don't want me to come around.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas.