Mary J. Blige Quotes

If you're looking for inner peace from the outside world, you're not going to get that. The inner peace starts with looking at you from the inside. Understanding that everything that comes to you is what you are. Everything from friends to boyfriends to the job you get - it's all a direct reflection of what you are on the inside.

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.

Negative words are powerful boomerangs so be careful what you say about people and yourself.

Believe in yourself when nobody else does.

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 blame my mother for nothing, but forgive her for everything.

In your life there's peaks and valleys and sometimes we regress, and we don't even know we regress. You just have to learn how to accept all of your mistakes and learn to love yourself again.

I believe there are certain things that God uses to get us out of a bad situation, and I believe music was one of the things he used for me.

I don't want no drama in my life, even though we have a little bit, but no more letting people control you. That's drama, because then you become something that you're not.

It's OK showing yourself some love.

I don't think I'll do foster care or adopt, to be quite honest.

It's that first step-getting out the door-that's the toughest.

If you can do that, you've already won.

It's up to us to choose whether we win or lose...and I choose to win.

We are all spirits. We get depressed. But music makes you want to live. I know my music has saved my life.

God comes first - if I don't love him, I can't love anybody, and if I can't love me I can't love nobody.

You can look at my palm and see the storm coming. Read the book of my life and see I've overcome it.

Love is wonderful, amazing, and the best thing that can happen to us.

When I was five years old I was molested and just, you know.

I remember feeling, literally right before it happened, I just could not believe that this person was going to do this to me. That thing followed me all my life. The shame of thinking my molestation was my fault - it led me to believe I wasn't worth anything.

I wish I had an extra day with my mom sometimes.

Or another hour in the day with my family, husband and children.

People in my neighborhood inspired me to sing.

Believe in your ability no matter what, but be realistic with yourself and your ability.

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.

'My Life' is soft, with notes of pear and gardenia, but still bold, with a woody base.

Once you climb to another level, you have to figure out how to sustain it.

Thank you so much for supporting me from the day I stepped foot into the music industry. It really means something to me to have Maya Angelou speak on my behalf. It also means a lot to have Oprah on my speed dial!

You have to create different things, either through lighting or changing the format of the songs and how you're going to sing them, and even sometimes props.

...I would be a liar and my fans would hate me if I said to them, 'Oh, we're perfect and everything is great.' We have situations just like everyone else. We're not out in public trying to kill each other, but it's real. We love each other.

I'm on my way to a place where I'd never dreamed I'd be, and that's perfection.

I do consider myself part of black history.

My responsibility to God is to live. That's the gift he gave me. What I do with it is up to me.

When I was a child I didn't care about getting an education, and I didn't finish high school.

It was only for two years, and I jumped from family to family. It's very scary.

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.

For the first time in my life, I'm proud of myself.

Working in the studio is a more personal experience whereas on stage in front of a billion people, its more exciting performing live.

I can see the music. I know what it looks like. I know what color it is. The words come easy, the tears come easy, and the joy comes easy. The music tells you what to do.

I'm hoping that my entrepreneurial side will have me at a place where I don't have to do anything. That's what I'm striving for.

I don't listen to people's opinions. I have people around me who I can trust, but most of all I listen to myself.

I barely have time for my own children.

To adopt more children and not have time for them, that would be poor parenting on my part.

The important thing is to realize that no matter what people's opinions may be, they're only just that - people's opinions. You have to believe in your heart what you know to be true about yourself. And let that be that.

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.

The music business is really, really small.

The real music is becoming almost extinct, if you don't stay true to who you are.

My first album is playful.

I mean, I know my heart is not clean, and your heart is not clean, and none of our urban hearts are clean. But you can be washed again.

You know a lot, but you don't know everything.

I like what I see when I'm looking at me when I'm walking past the mirror.

You have to have a plan. Everything has to be planned. For me, I start with the title of my album, before I even start with the songs. I write down different things that I want album to say, and then the songs come from the different words.

I'm striving toward this acting thing.

I'm definitely gonna work hard on that, whatever comes my way, I'm gonna work hard on it.

God loves me and sent his son to die for me so I have to live to please him because he saved me when everyone abandoned me.

When you tell your truth, you are coming from a real place, so you are automatically a leader.