I'm well trained. The only reason I am this slim is that I have to fit into the clothes. The samples are size 8, and I am naturally a size 10 to 12. I have been on a diet for my entire life.

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.

Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy.

I got to tell you, when I wrote 'Adios America,' I thought there was a 10 percent chance of saving the country.

I played sports. I had boyfriends. I loved high school.

Americans don't want immigration. They don't want any more. Why can't we have a home? You see on 'National Geographic,' 'Oh, the indigenous people, they have a home.' Everyone else can have a home. We are the only people on Earth not allowed to have a home.

I am not handsome, but when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet.

The first time I shared my music and style with my mom, she said, 'Boy, you look like you came right out of the 1950s.'

I think I'll always live in Fort Worth. It's great that I can now go anywhere I want to play music, but I love coming back here. I can roll down the streets and just reminisce.

Being a mom's so empowering and incredible. I'm one of those people who believes that life brings things to you at a certain time for a certain reason, and if you just go with it, that's where the best moments come from.

It was hard for me to leave the nest, but my mom is super proud of me. She said, 'You became independent really quickly, and I'm so proud of you,' but she misses me all the same.

A long time ago, a sports reporter wrote that I wasn't strong in the free-skate, that I was more of a short-program skater. And that bothered me because I work so hard every day just for a person to judge me on a couple of bad skates and deem me a bad free skater. That's absurd!

I believe in adventure and imagination, and I got that from my parents and the things I experienced as a child.

On signing day, my mom brought me the national letter of intent to Arkansas. I should feel like I'm making the right decision. You get that many people telling you that. I had been dreaming about it. I signed 'No' where I was supposed to sign my name and put an exclamation point.

When it's your will versus another person's will, the worst thing you can do is smile in their face when you're competing. That's what I tell our guys. Go have fun.

My mom taught us the Serenity Prayer at a young age.

I say if you're going to take a chance on something, you just go full balls to the wall.

Work used to be the No. 1 important thing to me. Everything revolved around it, and to have a new perspective and have something else, my family, not just being a mom but being a part of an incredible family of my own, it makes me have a different perspective on life that I think is richer.

My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.

To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?

I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.

I'm not a figurehead for anything. I was a single mom with two kids. What else was I going to do? It was either be in a band or be a waitress.

Remember those black-and-white films with Frank Sinatra? Those guys looked like men and they were only 27! Listen to Otis Redding singing 'Try A Little Tenderness'. That was a man who understood what a man has to know in the world. Show me a real man now! Where are they?

I have no sense of patriotism, but I do have a sense of community.

You cannot make women contented with cooking and cleaning and you need not try.

It's not vanity to feel you have a right to be beautiful. Women are taught to feel we're not good enough, that we must live up to someone else's standards. But my aim is to cherish myself as I am.

I feel beautiful when I'm at peace with myself. When I'm serene, when I'm a good person, when I've been considerate of others.

That's a big deal for kids, when they come into the kitchen and the teacher is drinking coffee with mom. They react differently on the next day when you say: 'Sit down and shut-up!'

In the summer we graduated we flipped out completely, drinking beer, cruising in our cars and beating up each other. It was a crazy summer. That's when I started to be interested in girls.

I hate wars and violence but if they come then I don't see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.

I had ridiculous amounts of energy. Mom's like, you're driving me crazy - do you want to try gymnastics? From the moment I started it, I loved it and it kind of was like storybook from there.

L.A. prides itself on newness or being the last frontier or just not liking old things and tearing them down to build new things. But Malibu history is interesting to me. My mom's family was one of the early families in California, so there's history going back to the 1840s or '50s.

Part of my desire to play music was because I wanted to escape the art world and the politics of it; the petty gossip-y art world. But you know, I feel like they're both equal forms of expression.

No one talks about woman power. The Spice Girls - they're masquerading as little girls. It's repulsive.

I see it as more of a teenage activity than, you know, she's only 11, but you know, I think it's great that she knows so many girls who want to play music. And I see it more as a teen activity than I do as going into music.

OK, so I'm a working mom that also gets to kiss George Clooney. That's a little bit of a perk of the job.

My mom was a free spirit, and she brought me up to be a free spirit.

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.

Older women know who they are, and that makes them more beautiful than younger ones. I like to see a face with some character. I want to see lines. I want to see wrinkles.

If you don't take the chance to live life, what can you say at the end of it?

My dad is an ob-gyn - he's retired now - and he wanted to come to the States to make a better life, for opportunity. My mom said that, on the plane ride here, I did not want to speak a word of English - I spoke Tagalog. And then, after the first day of school, I didn't want to speak anything but English.

My mom lived to be 91, and her advice was, 'Honey, just keep moving.'

When you grew up in a household where mom would keep the extra ketchup packets from McDonald's and keep them in a drawer just in case there came a day when you couldn't afford to buy ketchup anymore, that gets ingrained in you.

My dad told me something long before I was in politics, and when your dad gives you advice every single day, eventually one or two of the things stick in your mind. And he said, don't believe what people say, believe what they do.

I was a good student. My mom is a teacher, and her side of the family is all teachers. She put a big emphasis on getting good grades.

I naturally wanted to be saved, so when I came home I told my mom I wanted to be confirmed. That's the way I related to it, being raised an Episcopalian. I went to Dallas and got confirmed.

My mom has a tape from when I was, like, 2 years old, talking with my grandma, telling her a story that's really elaborate about werewolves and wolves.

My mom and dad met at UCLA when he as a captain in the Air Force and she was in her junior year.

If you go from a structure where you have the support and that partner and that construction of a family and that's broken apart, I think that's probably a lot harder than always being a single mom and having the father being a support in another area.