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

If you come face to face with some really challenging situations and tragic circumstances - you are going in there with a purpose. You are not going in there as a tourist. You're not going there just to merely observe. You have a purpose, and your purpose is to tell that story, to share that story for the bigger benefit of millions of other people. Your purpose is to create that bridge so you can give that story the dignity and the focus that it deserves, and you can become a part of the amplification that needs to be there.

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.

As a mother, you have that impulse to wish that no child should ever be hurt, or abused, or go hungry, or not have opportunities in life.

There's so much stigma around HIV/AIDS. It's a challenging issue, and the people that already have been tested and know their status find it very, very hard to disclose their status, to live with that virus, and to even seek out the kind of information they need. This experience of going to South Africa a decade ago really woke me up to the scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, how it was affecting women and their children. I haven't been able to walk away from it.

I think the whole experience of being a human being on the planet is such a mystery, to be honest. Trying to figure out one's purpose and [asking] "What is it all about?"

I don't think feminism is about the exclusion of men but their inclusion... we must face and address those issues, especially to include younger men and boys.