Zitat des Tages von Mary J. Blige:
It's OK showing yourself some love.
I don't think I'll do foster care or adopt, to be quite honest.
I've just been growing right along. It's painful, but it's a great pain, and I like suffering for great results. It's like going to the gym. It hurts really bad at first, but after a couple of months and after that diet, you're looking so hot.
When I was a child I didn't care about getting an education, and I didn't finish high school.
The younger Mary J. Blige, I would call her, she was very unaware, ignorant.
I used to think I was ugly. I thought I looked like a camel. A person who doesn't love themselves, they will see anything that pops up on their face. I've seen squirrels, I've seen a bird, and I've seen all kinds of animals on my face. But that is the result of self-hate. I've learned to say: 'You know what? I am a beautiful black woman'.
Believe in yourself when nobody else does.
Life is full of trials and tribulations. It's dramatic when you don't treat people right when you're in the tribulations, but I know now how to get out of it. You have to make a decision to say 'No more', and then you know what to do when the trials happen.
Music makes us want to live. You don't know how many times people have told me that they'd been down and depressed and just wanted to die. But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength. That's the power music has.
When I was little, like 7 to 15, there was nothing I wanted to do but go to church and go to school.
Nowadays, with the state of the music business, for any artist, whether you're up-and-coming or you've been in it for awhile, you have to explore different revenues and different ways of expressing yourself.
It's challenging to find an identity as a young person if you don't have the sustenance of love, because you're being shipped around.
My first album is playful.
I'm my worst critic, and I like the fact that I can listen to myself now and make fun of myself, listen, make changes - 'Oh, man, that's messed up. Okay, I need to work on that; I need to work on this.'
I've done well, I've been disappointed, and I think it all goes back to you. Of course the labels are going to be the labels. It's the music business. You are a business. That's what they do. So you've got to protect yourself.
Even if you feel someone has wronged you or owes you something, no one is going to give you anything for free.
I've been praying to God to show me how to forgive myself. Because... maybe... that's the thing I've been searching for.
My main exercise is cardio. The treadmill is fine, but running outdoors gives me the best results. I try to log 6 to 8 miles a week. I could be in the worst mood, but when I do my cardio, I feel much, much better.
I've been a tomboy my whole life. But then you get older, you get married, you soften up.
I can tell you I didn't feel good when I could not articulate properly. Getting my GED was important and I want other women to feel that.
By the time I was a teenager, when I went outside the house, it was about hip-hop all the time. Nothing but hip-hop, block parties.
If I'm going to be the best in what I do, I have to study what I'm doing, I have to see what I'm doing. I have to see it, I have to hear it. I'm just starting to appreciate myself - not starting, but appreciating myself in a way where I can look at myself back in a movie or listen to myself as much as I do now.
I'm on my way to a place where I'd never dreamed I'd be, and that's perfection.
I didn't never have to go to a therapist. I just always put it in a song and you heard me.
As a child I always wanted to be a singer. The music my mother played in the house moved me - Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Mahalia Jackson. It was truly spiritual. It made you understand what God was. We are all spirits. We get depressed. But music makes you want to live. I know my music has saved my life.
'My Life' is soft, with notes of pear and gardenia, but still bold, with a woody base.
You can hate me. You can go out there and say anything you want about me, But you will love me later because I told you the truth.
I care about me now. When I didn't care about me, I was, like, 'Why is this going wrong? Why is my life so bad?' But when you don't care about yourself, nobody else is going to care about you. So I learned to love myself, even if nobody else does.
My responsibility to God is to live. That's the gift he gave me.
I'm a singer who thinks like a rapper.
I think women should band together to get us more respect in all the businesses that we're in because, you know, if we turn 40, we're nothing and nobody. We all should band together and just say we're not gonna go down like that.
For the first time in my life, I'm proud of myself.
Once you climb to another level, you have to figure out how to sustain it.
I just want fans to walk away knowing that no matter what's going on, no matter how happy you are, no matter how sad you are, we did it. We're strong in this. We've come a long way, and life is not just one thing.
I do consider myself part of black history.
When life is real, it's not going to be smooth.