Brandy Norwood

I’ll be a nun, raise my daughter, and make albums.

Now that the baby is coming, I will do a lot more balancing. I’m going to be a real mommy.

I have so much more to go through as a young lady. But oh my God. I feel like I can do anything.

Nothing can stop me from loving my brother.

Mom would kill me if I showed my navel.

The idea of kids helping other kids is such a great way to introduce children to being involved in charitable causes and volunteer work, setting them on the path to doing good for others throughout their lives.

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.

There’s no other love like the love for a brother. There’s no other love like the love from a brother.

I feel very blessed to have two wonderful, healthy children who keep me completely grounded, sane and throw up on my shoes just before I go to an awards show just so I know to keep it real.

I have a wonderful shelter, which is my family. I have a wonderful relationship with my brother and sister; this makes me feel that I know always where I belong.

You know, it’s the silliness in me. It has always been there. I love to make people laugh. It comes from my family. My family is funny.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love. Authority is for children and servants, yet not without sweetness.

My father would always praise me. He always thought I was the smartest person

[On his mother] She certainly ran her own race… I thought my mother was nuts.

Siblings – the definition that comprises love, strife, competition and forever friends.

When I’m happier and healthier, my family is happier and healthier, and it affects how I interact with my friends and the people I work with.

How do you build a relationship when you’ve hardly shared a word but suddenly share a child? How do you love a daughter you don’t see for nearly two years? When does she become your daughter? How does she become your daughter?

I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is. The same thing is true in the work that I do. It’s all about me feeling where people are. So that’s why I try to be really present, even when I’m on a rope line. I never take for granted my interactions with people. And it’s never black-and-white. I’m usually reading the crowd, reading the people that I’m with. I guess if this role has changed me, it’s improved my ability to do that. I’ve gotten better at sensing where people are at any given time.

[Babies are] a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.