You want your fans to like what you do, because it's coming from your heart and soul. You write it, you produce this thing. It's like your baby.
— Gloria Estefan
I think we should all live the moment. But you also have to think ahead. You have to think, 'Am I going to be happy with this five, ten years from now? Is it going to let me evolve and grow, or am I going to grow to one day wish I had never done it?' Sometimes you just have to think a little bit ahead.
Fashion is nice, but it's for the fans. If it were up to me, I'd be in a sweat suit!
As an entertainer, my job is to help people have fun.
The Internet has been a blessing and a curse. The curse we know: A lot of people appropriating your intellectual property without paying for it. But I think it's important to realize the blessing of the Internet, which is that everybody has a voice and you can break through, even without a record company.
I wanted very badly to be a mum. I'm a very maternal person. But at the point that I met Emilio I was focusing on a career. I never would have thought that I would get married at 21 and much less be a mum by 23.
In this life, I'm always going to choose the positive.
I have great genes. Thank you to my mom and dad for that one.
Apparently Pope John Paul II and his boys - is that what you call them? - loved one of my songs and thought I was putting spiritual messages in my music. I'm not religious as such. Dogma and I don't get along.
My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double - she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother.
My inspirations include the Beatles - love, love, love them - Elton John, Carole King, and Stevie Wonder.
I love Gershwin. I love musicals.
If there's ever been a dark moment in my life... well, I wanted to check out. Music was a big escape.
I gotta tell you, my nature is not to be the center of attention.
A lot of the way I sing is playing off other musicians. It's what I love to do the most.
The '70s were a hot time. You know? I was, like, the most calm of all my friends.
Having felt people's love and support first hand through difficult moments in my life makes me feel it's our responsibility to help one another.
People tend to forget that celebrities are human beings. We live our lives. We try to do what we love, which is music. And to share it with everyone in our job usually is to entertain and to make people forget their troubles.
Touring is hard. It's really hard on the singer, especially, because your body is your instrument and you have to be so good, it's like boot camp out there; I can't do anything - just sleep, sing and be very healthy.
I spent 15 years on the road between touring and recording and I never saw anything. I want to enjoy life.
When I was a teenager, I was fat. I was shy. I wore glasses. I had a big eyebrow and hair all over my body. They were years of torture.
Once you know the Romance languages, singing in those languages is so sexy and sensual. I do have a global audience, so why not?
My mum had a very strong moral code, which I kind of came with. I never really had to be told what was right or wrong - I knew. I was very mature from early on and I was a very good girl, so she never had any trouble with me.
There are so many difficult things we're living through in the world today, so many horrible events, but we cannot let them stop us. No matter what happens, I feel you must move forward with optimism and not get totally sideswiped.
I'm careful what I put out there into the universe, musically. I don't take it lightly.
The reason I'm not more political is because I have music. And from a young age, I needed it. After prison, my father came to America, joined the Army, fought in Vietnam - and was exposed to Agent Orange. He died a slow, horrible death. Music was my escape.
What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.
I hold 'Mi Tierra,' my first Spanish-language album, very close to me because that was all done in my native tongue and won me my first Grammy.
There are so many beautiful things that are a part of the world, and I've always looked at life that way; I've always tried to put on a smile and a brave front, not just for my kids but in my own life and all the difficulties that I've gone through.
As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don't want our blunders in history to get repeated.
When most artists walk offstage, they go to a lonely hotel room. I went home to my family. They were there before the show, during and after. It's been great. I never would have done it any other way. I wasn't gonna miss raising my kids. There was no way that was gonna happen.
I'd love to have a program like 'Dr. Laura.' I studied psychology at the University of Miami, and when I rode the bus home from school, perfect strangers would strike up conversations with me and end up telling me their life stories. I think they could sense that I was studying to help people. That, or I have a face like a priest.
Nothing ever stays in the middle. You always go from one extreme to the other, and politics is certainly that way.
We protect aspirin bottles in this country better than we protect guns from accidents by children.
Everything that an artist does is a risk. Some people want you to stay the same. If you want to evolve, they want to keep you in a certain place.
Music has been so healing in my life, so the fact that my music could be that for someone else is the best gift of my whole career. People have told me that they got married to my music, divorced to my music, and played my music while they were having their baby.
I'm very comfortable in my own skin now. I started just being myself more and more. For women, this happens as you get older. I loved my 40s - I thought they were fantastic. And I'm loving my 50s. I'm going to love everything because you're either older or dead!
I was going to be a doctor, but I think my music allowed me to help more people than I could have done one-on-one as a psychologist. Just like other people's music really helped me.
Family has always been the number one priority no matter what happens anywhere else.
You know, it's funny how songs continue to grow and evolve and become a new and deeper reflection of your life.
I know that people think of me in terms of Latin music and that's wonderful, that's my heritage, that's who I am, but there's so much more to me and my music.
Music is almost mystical to me. It really has an incredibly powerful force.
I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band - just for fun - when I was 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish.
My job as an entertainer is to take you some place else. I love exploring different genres of music to please my fans.
All I tell artists is, 'Do what you love. Never let anybody talk you into changing what your musical idea is just to try to get a hit, because you're chasing your tail that way. It's not going to happen, and if you're successful, you have to do it the rest of your life. Stay true to it and do it for the sake of the art.'
My mom was an amazing singer and music was a big part of my life, so I grew up listening to Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini; I used to watch 'The Andy Williams Show' on TV. I was very musical, so I was watching stuff that most kids my age wouldn't be interested in.
In the United States, if you believe in yourself and you're determined and persevere, you're going to succeed.
When you're a front man for a band, there's nowhere to hide. It took me a long time to get used to that. But music is my first love. I started singing when I talked.
I don't want anything from Cuba. I want them to be free and enjoy the things I enjoy.
As an artist, you dream about accumulating enough successful music to someday do just one greatest-hits album, but to reach the point where you're releasing your second collection of hits is beyond belief.
