My whole problem is that all of my favorite things at Thanksgiving are the starches and everyone is trying to go low-carb this year even a green vegetable has carbs in it.

Well the album 'Intuition' is out and just went platinum officially. So I think to have the music doing what it's doing right now man it's the ultimate. Nobody is really selling records out there but we are at a million records and we dropped it at Christmas so we are just trying to get that thing to like two million you know.

The biggest risk I've ever taken is going on American Idol and trying to be myself. I wasn't going to try too hard to conform and I knew that it could possibly not work out.

Sometimes I feel an obligation to be accessible as a personality but for me the driving force since the beginning has always been good work taking risks trying new things. If the door opens go through it. Always go forwards.

I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that color is not important. What is important is the quality of our work.

I work really hard at trying to see the big picture and not getting stuck in ego. I believe we're all put on this planet for a purpose and we all have a different purpose... When you connect with that love and that compassion that's when everything unfolds.

If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable.

I'm one of these very focused people when it comes to day-to-day work and I'm trying not to think about what comes next so that I can stay very focused on what I'm doing now.

I like the challenge of trying different things and wondering whether it's going to work or whether I'm going to fall flat on my face.

The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

O man you are busy working for the world and the world is busy trying to turn you out.

No one knows 'men' as such any more than anyone knows 'women ' and if they do generalise they're probably trying to hide their own ignorance. You might know one 'man ' yes or even lots of individual 'men'.

I love women. I'm trying to do beautiful things with them. I'm not trying to insult them. My life is not about that.

It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.

I've been trying to find women writers for my staff for a while now and I have three women on my staff and three guys so it's pretty equal. I don't know why that is. It's been the same thing for a while. It's hard for female comedians to stand out. That's weird. That's a shame.

I always say God should have given women one extra decade at least especially if you want a family. You're trying to pack a lot in.

If you're trying to achieve there will be roadblocks. I've had them everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it go through it or work around it.