The sad truth is that opportunity doesn't knock twice.
Gloria Estefan
I have great genes. Thank you to my mom and dad for that one.
My mom was a source of strength. She showed me by example that women, regardless of how difficult life may get, can do it all.
Whatever it is your heart desires, please go for it, it's yours to have.
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.
Family has always been the number one priority no matter what happens anywhere else.
We seal our fate with the choices we take, but don't give a second thought to the chances we take.
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!
Motherhood is... difficult and... rewarding.
You've got to believe. Never be afraid to dream.
The responsibility of carrying and bringing a new life into this world is one that cannot be taken lightly.
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.
We protect aspirin bottles in this country better than we protect guns from accidents by children.
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.
In the United States, if you believe in yourself and you're determined and persevere, you're going to succeed.
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.
I have a very open line of communication with both my children.
If there's ever been a dark moment in my life... well, I wanted to check out. Music was a big escape.
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.
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.
Nothing ever stays in the middle. You always go from one extreme to the other, and politics is certainly that way.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I gotta tell you, my nature is not to be the center of attention.
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.
My inspirations include the Beatles - love, love, love them - Elton John, Carole King, and Stevie Wonder.
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'm careful what I put out there into the universe, musically. I don't take it lightly.
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.
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.
There's no reason that just because you're a celebrity you can't write.
To know that everything we say and do to this new little human being may have a profound effect on him or her is a daunting obligation.
You can put things off until tomorrow but tomorrow may never come.
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.'
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 mom was definitely very strict with me.
I'm a writer and this is what I love to do.
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.
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.
In this life, I'm always going to choose the positive.
A lot of the way I sing is playing off other musicians. It's what I love to do the most.
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 spent 15 years on the road between touring and recording and I never saw anything. I want to enjoy life.
I've been offered a lot of things that celebrities do that I wouldn't do, like perfumes, lines of clothing and this, that and the other.
Sometimes my mother had difficulty communicating with me about certain topics.
Sex and drugs were simply not discussed in our culture at that time.
There are certain realities we must speak of with our children that were not present when I was a child.
