Brandy Norwood

It’s VH1, it’s everywhere, and you know music is just the world right now. People love music.

I don’t know how I feel right now.

I wrote my own verses. Anything I did, I wrote myself.

You do not send me to Brooklyn to get a cheesecake and then I come back and you’re gone.

Music is all I know.

I’ve always wanted to be a mom at 23, 24ish, ever since I was a little girl. I’m right on schedule.

Nothing can stop me from loving my brother.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.

My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all his things. But he is my biggest pride.

Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.

I have real good parents. They poor. They have regular, poor jobs and what not. They real good people and what not; I was just raised in a bad society.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

The quality of a father can be seen in the goals, dreams and aspirations he sets not only for himself, but for his family.

We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like, how can you teach her that your in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out into the world. She can’t cut my hair, but that’s her hair. She has got to have command over her body. So when she goes out into the world, she goes out with command that it’s hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.

Having a sister is like having a best friend you can’t get rid of. You know whatever you do, they’ll still be there.

I am lucky because my family are comfortably off. My father has his own glass business.

People say: “Oh yeah, jobs for the boys”. I wish. You’ve got to fight even harder with a family like mine.

I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.