Ray J

My mission is to let all women know you don’t have to be like Paris Hilton and shoot a sex tape and three weeks later you have a reality show. You don’t (have) to be like Kim and shoot a sex tape and do Playboy and become this so-called superstar from having a sex tape. Just focus on your talent, the positive things of life that you do!

You don’t just decide to destroy a person by making up stuff, and no one at ‘SNL’ is writing to go after someone.

If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: who cares?

[on the “The Notebook” script] I’m a sucker for those sweeping love stories. When I read the script, I couldn’t stop crying! I just had such a powerful, instantaneous reaction – it was written so well.

It’s my nature to downplay.

I take conscious breaks for myself ’cause I like to rejuvenate and get my creative juices flowing. I also like to take my time with my creativity; I think it’s important.

I’m very outspoken. I will ask a silly question, but I really am deadly serious. I want to know the answer.

Any single part of Brexit is a mountainous task and that is before you get to the tiny little bits that you understand that we haven’t even thought might be a problem. John Oliver

[asked if she ever had any summer traditions when growing up] My family rented a cottage in Canada. They’d blare “Wake Up Little Susie” at seven in the morning throughout the entire campground. Everyone would roll over to the lodge and have sticky buns for breakfast, and then we’d jump on the trampoline all day long.

By getting up early in the morning one also gets more time at his disposal for work as compared to late-risers. Scholar and thinkers get up early in the morning and contemplate.

Working with people, the musical part is one thing but the personal part is totally different and just as critical. If the friendship is there and it’s a lasting friendship, then it will take care of itself.

His (Freddie Mercury) words got better quickly. There were some very overt lyrics. Don’t Stop Me Now is a good example. He was having a good time, and that was very much a cri de coeur. Some lyrics we wrote together like I’m Going Slightly Mad, which was funny. We had fun coming up with daft things, all those ridiculous phrases. I’d say it was Freddie’s actual musicality which was the cleverest thing of all, the notes, and his harmonic structure was quite brilliant. When he wrote The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, on the second album, he was crossing sections of six-part harmonies, and I thought: “Bloody hell, that is tricky stuff.” Then there’s The March Of The Black Queen, which is almost like prog-rock, and so outrageously complicated that I can’t even remember the arrangement myself. When you write songs that complex, you have to work hard at it, and it did invoke a lot of head-scratching. But then he’d come up with Killer Queen or, later on, lots of simple things like Crazy Little Thing. He had it on all sides. Freddie evolved. I always called him ‘the man who invented himself’. I think the talent was innate, but he dug deep inside himself and forced it out. His determination was quite something.

I’ve just been so lucky, but also I’m acutely aware that I’m only a brushstroke in the whole piece.

You must not look into that mirror at your doughy legs and flat feet. For today is about dreams and illusions, and unfiltered natural daylight is the enemy of dreams.

[whether he thought he was a sexy man-beast] I wouldn’t be able to say. I don’t think I’m much of one. It’s funny, it is the secret to any guy – if people find him unattractive or whatever you just get Stephenie Meyer to tell the world, to put on her Web site that this guy is now attractive and everybody changes their minds.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.