Carey: "I don't think anyone knows as much about what's right for me as I do."

Carey: "You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, 'I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just going to be myself.'"

Carey: "I just want one day off when I can go swimming and eat ice cream and look at rainbows."

Carey: "I don't want to be about hype and media. I don't want to put myself in everyone's face and make them sick of me at this early stage of my career. I make pop music. That's what I do, and it makes me happy. I want to be around for a while."

Carey: "I don't think there were great beauty trends in the '90s - I was just doing my own thing."

Carey: "You talk to people and they seem really nice and then you read what they write and it's very disillusioning. You have to deal with how people let you down in terms of that. Because I think I'm basically a nice person and I think I'm a real person, and a lot of people aren't."

Carey: "In this world, I call the shots and I think I know best."

Carey: "I definitely feel more complete than before. There's a void you have when you don't feel you've found the other part of who you are, so I'm in a different place now and that's nice to experience."

Carey: "I'm not vain, I'm insecure."

Carey: "I think that for me, personally, a lot of my choices have been to do with my own issues of not feeling safe as a child and feeling a sense of stability."

Carey: "A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time."

Carey: "I really don't do karaoke because it becomes a vocal performance rather than fun, like, 'Let's just sing this song and be silly.' It's not fun for me."

Carey: "I really rebel against authority."

Carey: "I'm something of an introvert, who is happiest when I'm creating in my own little world in the studio. I'm not into performing. I have to make myself do it because it comes with the territory."

Carey: "I'm experimenting with my voice. Every day I do different things with it, and if I feel it's appropriate I do it on the record."

Carey: "I need a lot of sleep, and my songs are all strenuous. Because I'm not a dancer-slash-singer, when I go out there people don't want to hear me just breeze through them. They want to hear every note. I'm definitely not going to do a full-out tour for this album either."

Carey: "One day I promised God that if he would give me my voice back I would never smoke again. I got three octaves back after quitting."

Carey: "I think the greatest gift to me is that I can express myself in songs. It helps me get through some of the hardest times of my life. It also helps me celebrate some of the best times."

Carey: "There is a light at the end of the tunnel... hopefully its not a freight train!"

Carey: "I prayed very hard for this to happen and it happened. I don't even think about what I've achieved, I haven't focused on it and I wish I had, because I really want to enjoy it, and I don't know if I am enjoying it, because I am going through my life like a bulldozer. I still haven't marveled at it."

Carey: "Whatever you're going through in your life, don't ever give up."

Carey: "I think that for me personally, a lot of my choices have been to do with my own issues of not feeling safe as a child and feeling a sense of stability."

Carey: "I am very insecure about my looks, and I always have been because of being mixed race."

Carey: "A lot of rappers don't have to go through what I had to go through as a singer. I was always in a bubble that they put me in, but I was always punching out. It was a tough line to walk."

Carey: "If you see me as just the princess then you misunderstand who I am and what I have been through."

Carey: "It's not easy that everything you do, everybody has to come in and critique it and give their opinion. Sometimes it does help me and sometimes it hurts me as a person. That's life. I have feelings."

Carey: "I'm not one of those people that goes into details of my personal life on national TV to get attention. Some things are better left unsaid."

Carey: "If you're not wearing a lot of makeup, you don't have to take a lot of it off. So, my goal is to wear the least amount of makeup possible so I don't have to steam my face and take it all off."

Carey: "Butterflies are always following me, everywhere I go."

Carey: "Trust is not very easy for me at all. I want to be a trusting person, but I've been bruised so many times - not to sound woe-is-me about my life."

Carey: "I think I have to remain eternally oblivious to age. Honestly, when you put a number on it yourself, it's just like, Why? Why do that?"

Carey: "Stardom is a magical yet freakish situation at times. It's a cliche but very true that at times, you feel so alone, even when you're surrounded by so many people."

Carey: "Never ever listen to anyone, when they try to discourage you, because they do that, believe me!"

Carey: "Sometimes it's tough because I've got to sleep 15 hours to sing the way I want to. It's not easy because my vocal chords are different than most people's."

Carey: "We're all a little wacko sometimes, and if we think we're not, maybe we are more than we know."

Carey: "People are like, 'What is your whole obsession with butterflies?' I'm like, 'I'm not obsessed. I like them. Can't anybody like something?'"

Carey: "Some of us talk about other people and what they do and la la la. But I'm not that person."

Carey: "I'm far from perfect. I'm still learning. I overworked myself, and I paid the price. I consider the breakdown a breakthrough. I needed to hit rock bottom. I needed to understand the cost of pushing so hard; fighting so hard against the system."

Carey: "I'm the queen of festivities, that's all I can say."

Carey: "Especially since I stared studying acting, I feel like I'm always super-aware of my emotions and my feelings and what's going on with me at every moment."

Carey: "I've seen the real extreme diva behaviour and I don't think that's who I am."

Carey: "I always felt like the rug could be pulled out from under me at anytime. And coming from a racially mixed background, I always felt like I didn't really fit in anywhere."

Carey: "I never thought that I would have love again, but it's amazing how the universe brings love to you."

Carey: "Time is irrelevant to me. I never wear a watch."