There's a kind of emotional exploration you plumb with a friend that you don't really do with your family.

Music is probably the only place I get energy from. Music and maybe watching a really tremendous performer, watching a terrific performer like Jagger or watching a great movie.

Here I am, one of the most colorful women of my time - if not of my block - being made to sound positively legumelike in printed interviews.

Culturally, it's very hard to change people's attitudes about public space.

It's the one who won't be taken that cannot seem to give, and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.

One of my first role models was Eugene Lang, a wealthy businessman who went back to his elementary school in East Harlem and addressed the sixth-grade class. He looked out at that sea of faces and said, "If any of you wants to go to college, I will pay for it." When I read that, I burst into tears. It was so generous and so basic. Not fluffy. I can't understand why we scrimp on education and shortchange our kids. Why would the citizenry do that to the people who are going to inherit its republic?

While I was growing up, I believed I could do anything I could think of. So the challenge was always to keep thinking - to get to where I wanted to be and then to think of somewhere else to go.