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.

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!

And rather than hide that, I would rather put that out on the radio and let someone see the full range of emotions. If you're going to be strong on the radio, you got to let it all out, even the ugly stuff. And you can't apologize for it.

Obviously, in dealing with a relationship, sexuality has to be involved, and jealousy and emotions like that. And I don't know, I've always been intrigued by those emotions.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

When on the set of a film, you have to play natural for entire scenes in a very unnatural environment. You have to express emotions and interact with other actors and also use your voice.

Emotions are the fuel to really move you along - that's the only way you can create music. If you don't feel any emotions, it's not going to happen.

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.

Most of the animated films I watched, the emotions are all prepackaged like canned music, the hand actions, the sighs.

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

The name of Jesus, like a secret charm, awakened similar emotions in the hearts of all the converts, and called immediately into action every feeling of moral loveliness, and every desire of dutiful obedience, which constitute Christian purity.

Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.

Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions.

My weaknesses are my jumps. The reason is that although I land them in practice, when I actually compete or perform, I should let my body go and stabilize my mind better. Also, I need to work on not letting negative thoughts and emotions get to me on the ice.

The fact that biological, or "natural" rules might help in the creation of a computer generated work of art is interesting, but even a wonderful work of art made in this fashion isn't the same as a person, with all his or her experiences and emotions involved, making art.

The concept of reason itself appears as an artificial attempt to separate intellectual powers from the frustrations, emotions, and accidents which cause events; the concept of reason is viewed as facade to prevent change.

A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them. There is no such thing as bad art.

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.

When I say manage emotions, I only mean the really distressing, incapacitating emotions. Feeling emotions is what makes life rich. You need your passions.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.

I'm always collecting emotions for future reference.

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

Well, if you're talking about the current climate, there's a lack of content in American film because I think people are deeply confused about their emotions, and they don't regret certain aspects of their own foreign policy.

What I mean is that today's films lay lot of emphasis on glamour and associated emotions.

I understand that it's hard for everyone, but one cannot give in to emotions... we'll have to draw lessons from the current crisis and now we'll have to work on overcoming it.

Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use.

Words are impotent to describe certain emotions.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

Because I was able to submerge myself into the character, I didn't have to go back and forth. You don't have to work hard to bring emotions. It all just comes naturally, you're there living it.

I've always found it easy and natural and, more importantly, necessary to articulate thoughts and feelings, and fierce emotions, through the written word. Fantasy and horror came to me when I was very young.

I did 10 years of comedies and 10 years of Westerns. I really like to stay away from car chases. I prefer the more intimate film. You have a much more direct association with the emotions.