Quotes from Jill Scott

If I feel really ugly or unhappy, sometimes I'll choose bright colors so they'll make me feel good. Yellows, pinks, light blues and orange. I just want to feel good all the time if I can. And colors and hairstyles and all that kind of helps out.

I think what irks me is that I feel like women are really being compartmentalized physically, and it's been done so much that now we're doing it to ourselves. I don't like it.

My stepfather was a very nasty individual.

I'm going to keep it real gully with you; the first two months, I wanted to give him back. I expected someone to come and save me because after you have the baby, nobody cares about you anymore. Nobody cares if you sleep, nobody cares if you eat. It's just you and this all-consuming thingy!

We all get angry and jealous sometimes, none of us is perfect, but we should not try to be different.

Ain't nothing coming easily in this life. Sometimes you gotta work, you gotta grow and it gotta hurt.

One of the reasons my ex-husband and I broke up is that he stopped eating my food.

I didn't leave home until 27. I was an only child raised in Philadelphia by my mother and grandmother. My grandmother controlled the stove. She made a lot of potato meals - mashed potato, potato souffle, potato pancakes. When we didn't have electricity, we ate romantically by candlelight.

When I get onstage, I automatically feel beautiful.

Being a mom, it feels like I did something so powerful and amazing. It's such a gigantic blessing, and a confirmation that the Creator exists. And all of that has made me feel sexier and stronger. I call it 'lava in my spine.'

For anyone who feels they are overwhelmed by their job, or maybe they take their job too seriously or are working too hard, I say go to a safari, particularly the Okavango Delta, and just be humbled.

The highs, the lows, the peaks, the valleys, whatever, it's all going to go into the art, whether I'm singing or acting or whatever.

When I sing, I have to live in that moment, so my audience can feel that. That is my reason for doing art.

Lately I've been going to all these high schools talking to the students, answering their questions, listening to what they have to say. It has been an incredible journey to be around them and try to give them what my mother gave me.

Beauty is an understanding of what you have, and it's forgiving yourself of what you don't have, and appreciating all of it.

I've learned that friendship does not equate business, business does not equate friendship.

The video for 'Whatever' is kind of a documentary in a way. It's showing that love can last. Not just in your early 20s or your late 30s, but in your 50s, 60s and 70s. There's an awful myth out there that when you get married, love and lovemaking fade. It's not true.

Common is one of the nicest people I've ever met, and to describe him as a vile rapper because he has an opinion... just says a lot about the state of America. You are allowed to have an opinion in the United States - he's never harmed anybody, he just has an opinion about a president that wasn't good for our country.

I truly have a village supporting me. My son has godmothers, godfathers, grandparents and so many others in his life who love him as much as I do. They're there for both of us. I may not have a mate or husband, but I'm definitely not a single parent.

People think that lemon is good for the voice, but it dries it out.