I wanted to educate myself about the world and I wanted to know what was happening to people in other countries. I feel now I have only just begun.

I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.

Our family may seem extraordinary in some magazines or something, but at home it's not. We're really just a very loving family. We're very close, and we don't read magazines. We just kind of go to work and come home. We try to keep a sense of reality into their lives. What's truly real, not Hollywood real.

What nourishes me also destroys me.

I'm at a strange place I suppose in my life. I think that what happens when you lose a parent, where you lose-you drop into a different kind of serious.

I hide my emotions mainly because you don't want somebody to know that you feel sorry for them, because they will feel worse, or because you don't want someone to know or see your fear. If someone like a sick kid or a burn victim sees your fear, they respond to how you respond. And if you show them it's terrible, they will get upset. It's something I've learned over the years.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we're able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.