When adversity hits, go out and learn something.

I hope that when children read my stories that they evoke images for children. I four stories can help children use their own imaginations and lead them to act the stories out or to embark on related research, they will learn more and learn to love reading more.

Broadway is a tough, tough arena for singing.

I'd like to be an original, to be myself and not a pale copy of anyone else.

I am an optimistic lady.

Once in a while I experience an emotion onstage that is so gut-wrenching, so heart-stopping, that I could weep with gratitude and joy. The feeling catches and magnifies so rapidly that it threatens to engulf me.

My sense of the family history is somewhat sketchy, because my mother kept a great deal to herself.