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.

There's always darkness around, and if you focus on the darkness, you don't know where to go. But if you direct yourself at the light - there it is! It's right there.

When you get to be nearly 60, you do take stock. You don't know what's around the corner.

I guess what I'm passionate about is, I see so many things that I find that there's no real solution to, and you're only here for such a brief moment in time, even if you live to be a hundred years old. Yet, what happens within that time frame? So many things happen.

I'm not particularly attention-seeking.

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.

I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness but I can't speak on their behalf.