From being a little girl in the projects, going through all of the mess that I was going through, to ending up at the Inauguration for the first African-American president, I'm speechless right now because I never thought I'd - I never ever - I couldn't even see that far. Even when I ended up in the music business, I couldn't see that.
I've had a lifelong love affair with makeup. When I was a little girl, I used to take my mother's makeup and paint all of my dolls' faces, and I even painted the dog's face!
Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.
The best money advice ever given me was from my father. When I was a little girl, he told me, 'Don't spend anything unless you have to.'
I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?