Ruben Studdard

My mother always taught me, even my dad, just never let other people’s opinions of you shape your opinion of yourself. And I never have and I never will.

People don’t have to like or support you, so you always have to say thank you.

Starting a new studio was a thrilling challenge, but it was more stressful than fun. I never took a salary, a bonus or expenses. I learned never to do anything you’re not passionate about.

Make Statements also applies to us women: Speak in statements instead of apologetic questions. No one wants to go to a doctor who says, “I’m going to be your surgeon? I’m here to talk to you about your procedure? I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice.

I think I’m prone to panic.

I’m a blowfish. I’m not a shark, I’m a blowfish. So that perfect example about me hitting my head, it’s like a blowfish. I wasn’t coming out of my house going to a paparazzi’s house to attack them. I’m defending my family in front of my own house. I’m defending my name as someone’s screaming something negative at me. That’s a blowfish. People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people.

[on Darren Aronofsky] I guess the first impression was that I’d been a big admirer of his work, and then I met someone who you’d never have put with that work. There was something very refreshing about that. I thought I was going to meet someone who was very intense and weird.

I know without our fans and the devotion of our fans we wouldn’t be here. I don’t mean to put them down, but I’m just stating a fact that it is hard to play to people that see you all the time and it takes a lot of fun out of it in some ways.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

One Christmas, when Freddie and I were flatmates in Kensington, we were trying to cook Christmas dinner but all we had was a packet of bread sauce that you make with water. We used to dream of a can of beans. (…) At Ridge Farm, when we weren’t working we would swim, play bad tennis, bad snooker and be beaten at table tennis by Freddie. I think he had been the champion at his boarding school and I never, ever saw him lose a game. That summer was more like a youth club rather than wild parties. In the evenings we would go down to the pub, come back to the barn and play more music.

I love artists who take risks-I think they inspire everybody else about horrible situations that no one wants to discuss.

You have to be quite stupid to act.

We’ve been on our peace gig, as we call it, for a year solid. And people say, ‘Do you think it’s having any effect?’ I can’t answer that. It’s like asking me in the Cavern, ‘Are you gonna make it?’ In the back of my mind I thought, I’m gonna make it, but I couldn’t lay it on the line. And I think that peace is more tangible than Beatles.

Every day, you try something new. So I just try to keep myself healthy physically and nutritionally.

I don’t have a sound bite for everything.

[on Ryan Phillippe] I’m lucky to find a person to share my life, and the best friend I’ll ever have.

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to – in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet – very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.