I myself was a wedding photographer when I was, like, 16.

I was a teenage godmother

My mother had me when she was 15. My father died before I was born. So my mother was a teenage widow, and she used herself as her greatest example so I wouldn’t end up in her position.

The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.

When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.

Obviously, from childhood to my teenage years, I really came into my own. I left the house early; I was on the streets when I was, like, 15. I’ve been holdin’ my own since that age

Even though I’m only fourteen, I know what I want, I know who’s right and who’s wrong, I have my own opinions, ideas and principles, and though it may sound odd coming from a teenager, I feel I’m more of a person than a child—I feel I’m completely independent of others

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.