Life is not quantifiable in terms of age, but I suppose in my fifties I am more grounded and more at ease in my own skin than when I was younger. I have a confidence that I didn't have before from the experiences I've had.

To try to help people have babies in a healthy way and to celebrate the process of delivering a child which will be healthy is, I think, almost the best part of healthcare.

I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

If I hadn't been a singer, I might have been a photographer or an artist. But it's singing I love. I sing all the time, and I feel really good that I've expressed myself.

I'm not a risk taker physically. I just have no interest in swinging myself off a mountaintop or parachute gliding or skiing down a totally vertical drop. These things don't interest me in the slightest, but I get so caught up in the color or the texture of the sounds of something. That's so funny to me.

Success breeds the excitement to continue going.

I didn't want to be perceived as a girly girl on stage.