Mariah Carey, born in 1969, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress renowned for her powerful vocal range and chart-topping hits. Rising to fame in the early 1990s, her debut album established her as one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Carey’s career is marked by numerous hit singles, including “Vision of Love,” “Hero,” and “We Belong Together,” showcasing her versatility across pop, R&B, and hip-hop genres. Beyond music, she has appeared in films such as “Precious” and “The Butler.” Carey’s philanthropic efforts and advocacy work further demonstrate her influence beyond the entertainment industry. With multiple Grammy Awards and other accolades, Mariah Carey remains an iconic figure celebrated for her vocal talent, songwriting skill, and lasting impact on popular culture.
Mariah Carey Quotes
1. “After every storm, if you look hard enough, a rainbow appears.”
— Mariah Carey
2. “If you believe in yourself enough and know what you want, you’re gonna make it happen.”
— Mariah Carey
3. “If you just believe in me. I will love you endlessly.”
— Mariah Carey
4. “You really have to look inside yourself to find your inner strength.”
— Mariah Carey
5. “There’s a hero if you look inside your heart. You don’t have to be afraid of what you are.”
— Mariah Carey
6. “I’m proud of what I am and who I am, and I’m just going to be myself.”
— Mariah Carey
7. “If you look inside yourself, and you believe, you can be your own hero.”
— Mariah Carey
8. “No stress, no fights. I’m leaving it all behind. No tears, no time to cry. Just making the most of life.”
— Mariah Carey
9. “Never listen to anybody who try to discourage you.”
— Mariah Carey
10. “All I want for Christmas is you.”
— Mariah Carey
11. “Lord knows dreams are hard to follow, but don’t let anyone tear them away.”
— Mariah Carey
12. “I just want one day off when I can go swimming and eat ice cream and look at rainbows.”
— Mariah Carey
13. “Whatever you’re going through in your life, don’t ever give up.”
— Mariah Carey
14. “Them chickens is ash and I’m lotion.”
— Mariah Carey
15. “I know you’re shining down on me from Heaven, like so many friends we’ve lost along the way. And I know eventually we’ll be together, one sweet day.”
— Mariah Carey
16. “Everyday is a holiday with me.”
— Mariah Carey
17. “Cause there’s a light in me that shines brightly. They can try, but they can’t take that away from me.”
— Mariah Carey
18. “Stay triumphant, keep on living. Stay on your toes, get off the ropes. Don’t let ’em ever count you out.”
— Mariah Carey
19. “I know life can be so tough And you feel like giving up But you must be strong Baby just hold on You’ll never find the answers if you throw your life away I used to feel the way you do Still I had to keep on going.”
— Mariah Carey
20. “Something in your eyes captured my soul, and every night I see you in my dreams. You’re all I know. I can’t let go.”
— Mariah Carey
21. “It’s kinda like being on a roller coaster. If you don’t get on the ride, you won’t experience the adventure.”
— Mariah Carey
22. “Once I was a prisoner lost inside myself with the world surrounding me, wandering through the misery, but now I am free. Free to love, free to laugh, free to soar, free to shine, free to give.”
— Mariah Carey
23. “Everybody out there, don’t ever take anybody for granted, ’cause you never know when you might lose them and you may never get the chance to tell them how you really feel.”
— Mariah Carey
24. “We’ve been expected to be perfect but we aren’t. We’re still human.”
— Mariah Carey
25. “It’s a long road when you face the world alone, when no one reaches out a hand for you to hold. You can find love if you search within your soul, and the emptiness you felt will disappear.”
— Mariah Carey
26. “I really haven’t paid attention to Madonna since about like 7th or 8th grade when she used to be popular.”
— Mariah Carey
27. “I am thinking of you in my sleepless solitude tonight.”
— Mariah Carey
28. “I can’t wear flat shoes. My feet repel them. I was in agony. My high heels had left my feet bleeding. Laugh all you want, my feet hurt.”
— Mariah Carey
29. “In the beginning of our time together I was walking on eggshells. Then it became a bed of nails, and then a minefield. I never knew when or what would make him blow, and the anxiety was relentless.”
— Mariah Carey
30. “You really just want to know that somebody loves you for you. Sometimes you feel like an ATM machine with a wig on it.”
— Mariah Carey
31. “Only once in a lifetime love rushes in, changing you with the tide.”
— Mariah Carey
32. “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.”
— Mariah Carey
33. “I started writing poetry when I was six. I had this teacher who didn’t believe the poems I’d bring in were mine because they were dark and sad. But I wrote about what I experienced in my childhood.”
— Mariah Carey
34. “There’s an answer, if you reach into your soul, and the sorrow that you know will melt away.”
— Mariah Carey
35. “In this world, I call the shots and I think I know best.”
— Mariah Carey
36. “The best part of making music, for me, is collaborating and working with new people and fresh sounds and all those things that get people excited to continue in this business that we all love so much.”
— Mariah Carey
37. “I’m the queen of festivities, that’s all I can say.”
— Mariah Carey
38. “Time has shown me there is no benefit in trying to protect people who never tried to protect me.”
— Mariah Carey
39. “Protect your dreams.”
— Mariah Carey
40. “Apparently I don’t do stairs, I won’t walk on carpet and I refuse to walk on grass. How do I do to get around, hover?”
— Mariah Carey
41. “Being a mother is probably the hardest job in the world. I feel like, in a lot of ways, children come into the world to teach us.”
— Mariah Carey
42. “She smiles through a thousand tears, and harbors adolescent fears. She dreams of all that she can never be, she wades in insecurity.”
— Mariah Carey
43. “See, I’m looking for a man that’ll rub me slow, make me sing real high when he goes down low.”
— Mariah Carey
44. “I don’t want a boyfriend just for the sake of it. I don’t trust most people out there. There’s too much at risk and I don’t need to be a notch on somebody’s bedpost. I’ll flirt with you all night long, but then it’s buh, bye!”
— Mariah Carey
45. “My heart has never been broken, I’ve never broken anyone else’s.”
— Mariah Carey
46. “Sipping Bailey’s Cream by the stereo, trying to find relief on the radio. I’m suppressing the tears.”
— Mariah Carey
47. “I can’t wear flat shoes. My feet repel them.”
— Mariah Carey
48. “We have to go through certain things in order to appreciate life and learn lessons.”
— Mariah Carey
49. “I love all holiday music. My two favorites would probably be Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” and Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song.” They epitomize Christmas for me. Those two recordings will never be touched. That’s why I’ve never redone them.”
— Mariah Carey
50. “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.”
— Mariah Carey
51. “Losing my mind From this hollow in my heart.”
— Mariah Carey
52. “And I miss you, dandelion And even love you And I wish there was a way For me to trust you But it hurts me every time I try to touch you.”
— Mariah Carey
53. “I know I can be diva-ish sometimes, but I have to be in control. The nature of my life, the nature of what I do, is divadom, it really is.”
— Mariah Carey
54. “When I saw you, when I saw you I could not breathe, I fell so deep. When I saw you, when I saw you I’d never be, I’d never be the same.”
— Mariah Carey
55. “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.”
— Mariah Carey
56. “I love “Frosty the Snowman.” My family and I like to go on a sleigh ride with a two-horse sleigh in Aspen, so we all scream different songs at the top of our lungs. I hope it doesn’t scare the horses.”
— Mariah Carey
57. “Don’t you know that you’re blowing my mind? What you do to me I can’t describe. Baby, I can’t hold back anymore. I just can’t conceal it. You’re the one I really adore.”
— Mariah Carey
58. “I’m so thankful that I’ve received The answer that heaven has sent down to me You treated me kind Sweet destiny And I’ll be eternally grateful.”
— Mariah Carey
59. “Right now Jack lives with me. Jack is my Jack Russell. I also have a Yorkie named Ginger, but Jack and Ginger can’t be in the same place at the same time because she is very jealous. Even if Jack’s not in the same state, she would growl if she heard his name.”
— Mariah Carey
60. “One doesn’t remain a teenager forever.”
— Mariah Carey
61. “True diva could not live without smart remark every now and then, a good sip of water.”
— Mariah Carey
62. “It’s in my genes. My mother was an opera singer. I’m clearly dramatic.”
— Mariah Carey
63. “I really rebel against authority.”
— Mariah Carey
64. “If critics have problems with my personal life, it’s their problem. Anybody with half a brain would realize that it’s the charts that count.”
— Mariah Carey
65. “Nothing feels like family when you are under surveillance, which I always was.”
— Mariah Carey
66. “I think one of the reasons I pushed myself so hard and worked so hard is because I never felt special.”
— Mariah Carey
67. “My siblings and my mother wouldn’t communicate for most of the year, so by Christmas dinner my brother and sister would come stuffed with hurt and anger, starving for attention. Eventually, inevitably, they would all explode in a torrent of verbal abuse. I would sit there in the center of the chaos, crying and wishing: wishing they would stop screaming, wishing my mother could stop them from screaming and cursing. Wishing I could be somewhere safe and merry – somewhere that felt like Christmas.”
— Mariah Carey
68. “Some of us need to be rescued, but everyone wants to be seen.”
— Mariah Carey
69. “If two people want to get married, it’s their prerogative – we hope. Everybody should be able to do what they want to do and be in the pursuit of happiness.”
— Mariah Carey
70. “I’m really fortunate. I’m really happy, and I’m really really lucky to be where I am.”
— Mariah Carey
71. “Pregnancy was probably the best and the hardest thing I’ll ever go through. I know for a lot of women, it can be wonderful and relatively easy.”
— Mariah Carey
72. “We’re all a little wacko sometimes, and if we think we’re not, maybe we are more than we know.”
— Mariah Carey
73. “You can’t live with regrets. It’s about the journey.”
— Mariah Carey
74. “If there was any perception of a fairy-tale marriage or life, it was absolutely smoke and mirrors. The ironclad safety that Tommy provided from my family turned into an ironclad dungeon. The control and imbalance of power in our relationship accelerated.”
— Mariah Carey
75. “I’m very hard on myself and I have too many issues.”
— Mariah Carey
76. “Underneath the shine, however, I had some inkling that there was a darker energy that came with him – a price to pay for his protection. But at nineteen, I was willing to pay.”
— Mariah Carey
77. “More than my personal happiness, I needed my career as an artist to survive. Happiness was secondary. Happiness was a fleeting bonus. I married Tommy because I thought it was the only way for me to survive in that relationship. I saw the power he could put behind my music, and he saw the power my music could give him. Our holy matrimony was built on creativity and vulnerability.”
— Mariah Carey
78. “Little did I know, giving in to Tommy’s demands would gradually swallow my privacy and begin to erase my identity.”
— Mariah Carey
79. “Nothing that’s ever happened has taken away the optimist in me. It’s always, “Whatever-let’s go to Disneyland.” Yes, I have my bleak, tortured-artist moments, but you have to hold on to what’s positive.”
— Mariah Carey
80. “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.”
— Mariah Carey
81. “Tommy had shared his own opinion with me and my nephew Shawn: “Puffy will be shining my shoes in two years.” I was stunned. Wait. What did he say? It was one of the very few times I stood up to Tommy, telling him that what he had said was blatantly racist.”
— Mariah Carey
82. “Don’t say she takes it all for granted I’m well aware of all I have Don’t think that I am disenchanted Please understand.”
— Mariah Carey
83. “When it comes to lingerie, I know what I’m doing.”
— Mariah Carey
84. “I’m not great at putting my hair into a bun, but I’ll do it if I have to.”
— Mariah Carey
85. “I listen to older music a lot more than new singers. I listen to whatever’s on the radio, but when I want to listen to something that moves me I put on a Stevie Wonder record.”
— Mariah Carey
86. “And I missed a lot of life, but I’ll recover Though I know you really like to see me suffer Still I wish that you and I’d forgive each other ‘Cause I miss you, Valentine, and really loved you.”
— Mariah Carey
87. “My beauty school class was made up of mostly Italian girls. There were mean girls, there were shy girls, there were regular girls, and then there were the girls.”
— Mariah Carey
88. “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.”
— Mariah Carey
89. “People are always asking, ‘Is everything ok?’ Look, I was not depressed, ok? I was just freaking exhausted.”
— Mariah Carey
90. “Since having the babies, I realize that 90 percent of losing weight is my diet.”
— Mariah Carey
91. “Most record executives just didn’t know how they would work my record. They weren’t sure it could “cross over.” But for the record, Teena Marie never cared about crossing over. And I didn’t want to cross over either. I wanted to transcend.”
— Mariah Carey
92. “I don’t go out much. I’m also not promiscuous. If I went out with everyone the press said I did, I’d never have time to write or sing.”
— Mariah Carey
93. “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 marvelled at it.”
— Mariah Carey
94. “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.”
— Mariah Carey
95. “It’s hard to be someone that people talk about and write about, you know? They don’t know me.”
— Mariah Carey
96. “But I closed my eyes Steadied my feet on the ground Raised my head to the sky And the times rolled by Still I feel like a child As I look at the moon Maybe I grew up A little too soon.”
— Mariah Carey
97. “My father taught me that words have meaning and thus, they have power.”
— Mariah Carey
98. “One of the cops, looking down at me but speaking to another cop beside him, said, “If this kid makes it, it’ll be a miracle.” And that night, I became less of a kid and more of a miracle.”
— Mariah Carey
99. “I’m not a subscriber to walking into large corporate entities that I have to walk into and be waiting in line, because then I have to stand there.”
— Mariah Carey
100. “I’ve been working on my craft for a long time. People never want to let go of the whole ‘Glitter,‘… I’m like, ‘It’s eight years later, people. Let’s move on.”
— Mariah Carey
101. “I was too excited to be self-conscious – at that point in life, my ambition was stronger than my shame. Who cared if I arrived a little hungry and a little shabby?”
— Mariah Carey
102. “I can do a reddish-brown or brown lip, but not a bright red. I just don’t look good in it. Over the years you learn certain things that don’t look good on you, and that’s one of them for me.”
— Mariah Carey
103. “I was barely conscious but my standards were still awake.”
— Mariah Carey
104. “Over and over I have tried to be her fire department, financing treatments and paying for stays in premium rehabs. But even with substantial resources, there is no way to rescue someone who doesn’t realize they’re burning.”
— Mariah Carey
105. “I was into it. After all, I sincerely thought I would be with Tommy forever and that the home we would make together would be just as timeless, everlasting, and spectacular as the music we were creating – behind which, of course, I was also the creative force. And spectacular it was. We even had a ballroom. I was in my early twenties, with my own ballroom!”
— Mariah Carey
106. “Because I was never alone, I had no comprehension of the impact my music and I were making on the outside world. I never had time to think or reflect. I now believe that this was completely by design. Did Tommy know I would be easier to control if I were kept ignorant of the full scope of my power?”
— Mariah Carey
107. “I loved Jordan. He was one of the greatest athletes of our time.”
— Mariah Carey
108. “There was a studio with sophisticated recording equipment, but there was also very sophisticated security equipment outfitted throughout the house – listening devices, motion-detecting cameras – recording my every move.”
— Mariah Carey
109. “I understand people want to hold on to their roots.”
— Mariah Carey
110. “No matter how prime the real estate, how grandiose the structure, if it’s designed to monitor movement and contain the human spirit, it will serve only to diminish and demoralize those held inside.”
— Mariah Carey
111. “I was bound to be a beauty school dropout.”
— Mariah Carey
112. “He was the one who cried during some of our more explosive fights. And I would end up consoling him, completely abandoning my needs, my pain. It was ruthlessly manipulative.”
— Mariah Carey
113. “I became an expert in sconces – sconces, dahling!”
— Mariah Carey
114. “You don’t have to be doing vocal acrobatics or singing all over the scale to have soul.”
— Mariah Carey
115. “The minute I started addressing my feelings, I actually came out of very negative situations.”
— Mariah Carey
116. “The first time Tommy called, he hung up. But he didn’t give up. He called back and this time left a curt and serious-sounding message: “Tommy Mottola. CBS. Sony Records.” He left a number. “Call me back.”
— Mariah Carey
117. “Still vibrating with rage, he slammed his fist on the table and announced, “I just want everybody to know that THANKSGIVING IS CANCELLED!”
— Mariah Carey
118. “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.”
— Mariah Carey
119. “My brother was shattered into pieces, scattered to the wind, and our father’s outdated tools of militaristic discipline were inadequate to help him collect himself and prepare him for manhood.”
— Mariah Carey
120. “Let it all dissipate And I tried to forget As I closed my eyes.”
— Mariah Carey
121. “The international music scene has grown so much, and America is sort of following that.”
— Mariah Carey
122. “I became his new star just as he was beginning a huge position at a new label, so he had the influence to clear the runway for my ascension into the sky. He was willing to move heaven and earth to make me successful. I recognized and respected that power.”
— Mariah Carey
123. “I was a fish out of water, and though I survived it, I knew that no one there really cared about me, and I certainly knew I wasn’t staying.”
— Mariah Carey
124. “I was a wayward child With the weight of the world That I held deep inside. Life was a winding road And I learned many things Little ones shouldn’t know.”
— Mariah Carey
125. “Strange how death can make people forgive those who trespassed against them and their children.”
— Mariah Carey
126. “But I was not swept off my feet, and trust and believe me, Tommy Mottola was no Prince Charming.”
— Mariah Carey
127. “I performed “Emotions” at the MTV Video Music Awards and the Soul Train Music Awards. And here I was again, about to hit another stage, and somehow I had no clue that I was famous.”
— Mariah Carey
128. “I had no idea how to handle what was going on. It was all of them against me. They had planned it. They fooled me into thinking they actually liked me.”
— Mariah Carey
129. “For most of my childhood I was caught between my brother’s fury and my mother’s sad searching.”
— Mariah Carey
130. “You don’t have to do this,” they all said. But I truly believed I had to. I saw no way out. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d learned how to endure disappointment and carry on, to make the best of things and keep working. I certainly knew how to live with fear. I didn’t know life without fear.”
— Mariah Carey
131. “Every weekend, Tommy would turn off the radio that was my lifeline and take a moment of silence before popping in one of his beloved Frank Sinatra CDs. What a tragic metaphor, listening to Tommy hum “My Way” as he drove us back to my captivity.”
— Mariah Carey
132. “After a childhood of being uprooted and plopped into all kinds of precarious living arrangements, I finally had the chance to build my own, from the foundation. I got excited. I got into it.”
— Mariah Carey
133. “I also insisted on paying half of all the costs. I wanted it to be my house.”
— Mariah Carey
134. “I was easy to manipulate, but the dynamic of my relationship with Tommy was complex. In many ways, Tommy protected me from my dysfunctional family, but he went to the extreme: he controlled and patrolled me.”
— Mariah Carey
135. “I didn’t know that our dream mansion would come with an unfathomable thirty-million-dollar price tag.”
— Mariah Carey
136. “It was the first time I felt safe enough to go back and peek in on Mariah, the little one, and recognize what she had survived. And suddenly, the first verse and chorus of “Close My Eyes” came to me:.”
— Mariah Carey
137. “But I knew some things he didn’t know too, particularly when it came to trends and popular culture, which I suspect made him feel threatened. He seemed threatened by anything he couldn’t control.”
— Mariah Carey
138. “Our relationship was always platonic and never got weird. After he heard me sing, Will believed in my talent. He took me with him to Def Jam Recordings, the hottest new hip-hop label at the time, where he was signed.”
— Mariah Carey
139. “And there is a lot of respect due to him. He was a visionary music executive who fearlessly and ferociously dragged his visions into reality. He believed in me, ruthlessly. “You’re the most talented person I’ve ever met,” he would say to me. “You can be as big as Michael Jackson.”
— Mariah Carey
140. “I was spending less and less time at my Chelsea apartment and began spending most nights with him. Soon, I felt pressure from Tommy to give up my place, and against my better instincts, I gave.”
— Mariah Carey
141. “I noticed the cops too, standing there, unfazed, in the pulsing midst of the energy and excitement. It was one thing to be informed, but quite another to see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, and feel in my soul the reaction from real people to me and my music. What I felt that night in Schenectady was not idol worship, it was love. It was the kind of love that comes from honest connection and recognition.”
— Mariah Carey
142. “Heartbroken and in tears over the shocking death of my friend, the incomparable Ms. Whitney Houston. My heartfelt condolences to Whitney’s family and to all her millions of fans throughout the world. She will never be forgotten as one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth.”
— Mariah Carey
143. “I have memories of Australia that I’ll just never ever get over.”
— Mariah Carey
144. “I don’t think anyone knows as much about what’s right for me as I do.”
— Mariah Carey
