As much success came to him, my father stayed true to his promise. He built the hospital to help the most helpless children with catastrophic illnesses.

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

You really do learn by example... Especially women, sometimes we think somebody's going to rescue us, or somebody's going to teach us how to do it, when in fact we have to understand that the biggest resource we have is inside of ourselves. I know that I can count on me to take care of me. That's a very important thing to know.

That is the difference between St. Jude's and all other children's hospitals. The other hospitals are not bad at all; they're good hospitals, but they're just working with what they know, and St. Jude's is working with what nobody else knows, because they're doing research.

I am extremely grateful for two big gifts from my father. First, my sense of humor - the ability to see the humor in something while it is happening. That has cushioned my life. I am also grateful for the work of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. It has enriched my life and made me a very different person.

One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man.

In my work, there's a tremendous amount of rejection and waves of fertile and fallow times.