I just liked the feeling of being on stage. My parents weren't pushing me, they didn't have to, I was obsessed.

I mean these people who work on Broadway, in my opinion, are the most gifted of everyone. I mean they really know how to dance. They really know how to act. They really know how to sing. They know how to perform.

I don’t really get shaken very much. People could heckle me, a spotlight could go out, I could forget a lyric... I’m not operating on somebody’s brain, you know what I mean? So I just think it’s all funny.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s, when I was 5 years old, my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

Life is really like that: there are certain things that are wonderful and certain things that are not so wonderful and what you are going to do about it. With grace and with dignity, move through them. Deal with them.

They don't make you what you are, you do. You are what you choose to be.

I think a dad has to make his daughter feel that he's genuinely interested in what she's going through.