Quotes

I see my upbringing as a great success story. By disciplining me, my parents inculcated self-discipline. And by restricting my choices as a child, they gave me so many choices in my life as an adult. Because of what they did then, I get to do the work I love now.

You can't invent Google, Facebook or the iPod unless you've mastered the basics, are willing to put in long hours and can pick yourself up from the floor when life knocks you down the first 10 times.

I kind of - I like my life; I feel I have lots of opportunities. And my parents actually having had such high expectations for me - I would say it's the greatest gift that anyone has ever given me. I complained a lot when I was little, but that's how I feel now. And that's why I tried to do the same with my two daughters.

In Chinese culture, it wouldn't occur to kids to question or talk back to their parents. In American culture, kids in books, TV shows and movies constantly score points with their snappy back talk. Typically, it's the parents who need to be taught a life lesson - by their children.

When my kids wanted to give up on things, I wouldn't let them, and those are lifelong lessons.

For my senior prom, my father finally said I could go - as long as I was home by 9 P.M.! That was around the time that most people were heading out. When I was little I was so mad at them all the time. 'Why can't I do this?' 'Why are there so many rules?' But looking back now, my parents gave me the foundation to have so many choices in life.

Disaster, to me, means in some big or small way, things going wrong. And that's obviously a matter of perception, right? Let's say your puppy chewed up all the shoes in your house. She probably had a fine time doing that. In her mind, a red letter day, the highlight of her puppy life.

People are going to come into your life that need you, and being there for them makes the day worth living. People are going to come into your life that you need, and that's the really crazy thing.

I think what I mostly realize is just that life is unpredictable. So don't be afraid, but just enjoy the day you're in. Really make the most of it.

Anybody who's ever gone through a hard time - any outsider's perception, no matter how much information they're given, they have no idea what the person's life is like.

Life goes by really fast, and it seems that there are times when you're burying a lot of friends and family. And then there are times that feel really precious and everybody is doing okay. This is one of those times.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

I can look at the future with anticipation. And it's comforting to know that someday, as Christians, we'll be able to look back and have a little more clarity on why certain things in life happened.

Life is a process, and you just take it a day at a time, and you can't live in tomorrow, and you can't reach back and be in yesterday. No matter how much you want to, you just have what's right there in front of you.

Real relationship is gritty and earthy, the stuff that life is made of.

I think that if my kids are completely convinced of God's unfailing love for them, whether they fail or not, they'll have confidence to persevere in life.

I write about everything, but I just - how faith filters through all that and colors your opinion of other people and life and all that.

I have spent probably years of time waiting in studio lounges - waiting on a mix, waiting on my time to sing, waiting on, waiting on, waiting on. That's just the nature of life.

For me, the backdrop of half the experiences of life includes music.

I can look back at different times in my life when I felt I could not find my way out of whatever it was. I'm not necessarily talking about marriage, but I wanted to pack it in. I wanted to disappear. A lot of that has to do with being in the public eye.

I just wanted to do something about the teenage experience; it's such a wonderful and horrible time of life.

Everything you try to do in life, of any value, people are going to be saying, 'No, no, no.' You have to have the ability to not see that or hear that.

A teenager has to decide what they're going to do with their life, and that's one of the most important decisions that you'll make.

As I wrote about my childhood, I realized that there was no big tragedy. Being multiethnic is not a tragedy. I didn't have any big life-threatening illnesses, no tumors, no kidney malfunctions... I came from a very poor family. I was chubby as a kid.

I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs and stuff - not a natural gig-er.