I come from a family of storytellers. Growing up, my father would make up these stories about how he and my mother met and fell in love, and my mother would tell me these elaborately visual stories of growing up as a kid in New York, and I was always so enrapt.

A man can get my attention by smiling at me and then coming over and talking to me. The best way to get a girl's attention is to start a conversation.

Create something for yourself that you feel proud of, that you are in control of, that gives you a better understanding of the type of artist you want to be.

Sometimes as human beings, we're so contradictory - we may say something or do something and completely contradict ourselves. That's what I'm learning to embrace in television - not knowing what's going to happen.

Jah is love, or God, whichever way you might accept it.

I'm the kind of person who always wants more. I was successful materially, but I know life is much more than worldly success. I saw all these blessings God had given me. The way to give thanks is obedience to God.

They were doing a full back shot of me in a swimsuit and I thought, Oh my God, I have to be so brave. See, every woman hates herself from behind.

I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant.