To be completely stripped bare of any image power or my hair. To step onstage and get the response that I got blew any problems I had about self-image out the door.

Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana.

To be completely stripped bare of any image power or my hair. To step onstage and get the response that I got blew any problems I had about self-image out the door.

The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.

Don't let anyone tell you that you have to be a certain way. Be unique. Be what you feel.

I stand before you a totally healthy person.

Love is never wrong.

There will always be someone else with a different view than you. I appreciate them and would never say that they are wrong. I hope that they would give me that courtesy also.

I'm so close to Heaven, this Hell cannot be mine.

I feel my heart break to see a nation ripped apart by it's own greatest strength - it's diversity.

I definitely feel we're moving forward. There's a lot more understanding... there's less fear and we're working on there being less hatred.

I've sold my soul for freedom. It's lonely but it's sweet.

I've been a rock star since you were very young. But I've never encountered anything as powerful as cancer.

All men, and women, and everything in between are created equal.

Chemotherapy tests your sanity.

Christmas comes during a season when the Earth is in its darkest time. It's a holiday for the family and for everyone.

Gay people are born everyday. You will never legislate that away.

I adopted a healthier diet. I take at least a tablespoon of apple-cider vinegar a day. It's an old wives' tale, but it really is one of the best things you can put in your mouth.

I always tell people I'm grateful for my cancer diagnosis because it was the greatest gift because it completely changed my life. I was able to stop and let my whole life and world just crash over me like a wave. And I stood there and went, 'Wow.' And for the first time, I stopped everything. I had to.

I am a songwriter. I do get to put my personal experiences in song.

I believed in Obama for social issues. I believe he brought our nation together and healed our racial divide. Martin Luther King's dream came true when he was elected. That's huge.

I can be a rock star with a television show and still have a self-esteem problem. So it's nice to have your dad go, 'Hey Melissa, I'm proud of you - you're doing good.'

I can look at cancer as a disease that picks me out and 'why me,' or I can look at it through love and say, 'This is a wake-up call. This is my body telling me: 'Hey, you're out of balance here. It's time to get in line with yourself.'

I don't have a bucket list because it is my dedication to live every day of my life there. I don't have a bucket list because I'm doing it that day. I don't want to go to bed and say, 'Oh, I wish I had done this.'

I don't think anyone masters parenthood.

I have a very strong opinions about health and our responsibility to our own health, and I will always say what I feel.

I have days when I say, 'I'm going to have five chocolate chip cookies today.' I'll have a salad every day but every week I have a cheat day.

I kind of thought when I was 30 that you're as good as your going to get. And that's not true.

I think I've been on a path ever since I was born, a path of high stress. I put myself, my career, it was a big old juicy carrot right in front of me for all of my life.

I think being a parent is knowing how to love. Sometimes love is discipline, sometimes it's humor, sometimes it's listening.

I write songs for people who drive in cars. I really do.

I'm exploring the maturity, the wisdom that just comes from having gone around the sun 50 times. My experience is, 'Oh, I'm never really going to get it right. I'm never going to get it done. But that's not the point here.' The point is the journey.

I'm for gay marriage, because I'm for gay divorce.

I'm very fortunate that I have a wonderful family around me and loved ones.

I've worked since I was 11 years old, playing music and following the dream, and shaking and moving and doing it. And then, you have cancer and it was like 'Ooooohh.' It was like a big eraser. It was the only thing in my life that had ever made me just stop.

It was tough being a single mom. It was tough being in a divorce with children. Very, very hard.

Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.

My friends have always told me that rock stardom was wasted on me.

My kids and I love to listen to Bill Cosby.

On the road, as a 'rock star,' there's superficial attention and adulation is thrown at you for a couple of hours - then you're alone in your room and it's lonely.

Once I overcame breast cancer, I wasn't afraid of anything anymore.

Our society, where we are right now, our minds are junkyards. We watch TV and sit on the computer all day and barely have an original thought.

People ask me, 'Is being a parent the be-all, end-all?' And I say, 'Oh, it definitely is up to the person, and it is difficult, it can be very difficult, and it can be extremely healing.' That's what I have found, that the children are mirrors. Everyone is a mirror, but children especially because they're day and night and all day long.

There are many plant medicines that are available to us that have a lot of stigma around them that I hope, in the future, our medical community can look at, because I would absolutely go to those alternatives first before I went back to Western medicine.

There is no fear when you choose love. The more you choose love, the more love is in your life. It gets easier and easier.

There's been so many different types of musicals, and it's a funny genre because there's a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.

Video is a funny thing. It's one thing to be an artist, singer-songwriter, and use words and create pictures in people's minds. And then be asked to do video for it, to actually give a certain visual for your song.

We all want to judge; it's an intrinsic part of our society and human nature. I'm not surprised that talent shows are hits, but I'm glad some of them aren't so brutal.

What I do believe in is other worlds and spirits. There is some other power in control - levels of energy that perhaps we don't see.