I never met a person as determined as my mother. From working hard for six kids to just trying to keep the household down or maintain my father's discipline, my dad, I'm so much like my father too. My father was so introverted, quiet, shy, nice. I got attributes from my father and mother.

People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.

A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.

Christmas is more stressful with present buying and making sure everyone gets included, but Thanksgiving is really not that. I don't ever really get stressed out about the food.

Nobody makes bouillabaisse from scratch. It's all a bunch of malarkey. Even the restaurants buy a commercial-grade product. I had a very famous chef tell me that.

I'm an activist for gay marriage equality and children's rights. I'm the face of Share Our Strength.

At this point in my life I am just about enjoying my free time and my downtime and that's what is about for us. My job is about making your job easier. I take a lot of pride in the quality of what I present, especially in 'Money Saving Meals.'

Baking cookies is comforting, and cookies are the sweetest little bit of comfort food. They are very bite-sized and personal.

Like my dad, I have a Christmas party most years. I like to celebrate and see as many people as possible.

I didn't grow up identifying with beauty. I grew up thinking I could be smart and funny - those are the things I got feedback on.

Some people think my father was a spy, because of working for that government agency in Vietnam, but he can't find his car keys, much less keep a national secret.

'Mom' isn't an adjective or a personality; they're not all the same.

The thing about good writing is it has a music to it.

I've pretty much always been on a diet since I was born. And the women in my family struggle, so I find the less I think about food, in a way, the happier I am. In general, I think I eat less the less I think about it.

I get a delivery of a diet food during the week, which doesn't mean that I don't eat the occasional Krispy Kreme doughnut.

I've always thought my strengths were I'm smart, and I have a good sense of humor. I definitely struggle with feeling confident.

The Christmas story has such power and such appeal every year. There are other stories we get tired of. You think of your favorite movie; you don't want to watch it 15 times.

Somehow we just don't make the same boisterous fun of Holy Week that we do of Christmas. No one plans to have a holly, jolly Easter.

Easter may seem boring to children, and it is blessedly unencumbered by the silly fun that plagues Christmas. Yet it contains the one thing needful for every human life: the good news of Resurrection.

The Church is the safe place to be. I can safely believe everything the Church teaches. It will not harm me, and in fact it will equip me to grow and grow and have a better and better ability to experience that direct presence.

God is not looking for repayment, but repentance. What heals a broken relationship is sincere love and contrition.

Of the seven deadly sins, anger has long been the one with the best box of costumes. When the guy in the next car rages at you, he's dangerous. When you rage at him, you're just. We can usually recognize the results of anger, especially in others, as destructive and evil.

As a teenager and a student, I totally cast away the Christian faith. I just believed it was stupid, and only stupid people could believe it. I actually became an anti-Christian, and very antagonistic.

May it be long before the people of the United States shall cease to take a deep and pervading interest in the Fourth of July, as the birthday of our national life, or the event which then occurred shall be subordinated to any other of our national history.

It is a very great mistake, and a very common one, even for well-read persons, to adopt the idea that the progress of the human race in the science of government, in the arts of civilization and refinement, and in the establishment of morality and religion, has been constantly and steadily towards improvement and perfection.

Of the judicial department of the Government, the Supreme Court is the head and representative, and to it must come for final decision all the great legal questions which may arise under the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the United States.

The Obama administration has turned a blind eye to radical Islam since before they came to office. If you look at everything that's transpired since the famous Cairo speech in 2009, it's all been an embrace of those who are the most radical elements in that part of the world. That is not a good sign for America's foreign policy.

We've been in the nation-building business since World War I, and especially since WWII. The goal is not a Jeffersonian Democracy in Afghanistan, but a representative government that respects human rights, protects its own people, and is a friend of the West. These are very realistic - and necessary - goals.

There's the assumption being made by the national security advisers to the Obama administration that the North Korean leadership is not suicidal, that they know they will be obliterated if they attacked the United States. But I would point that everything in South Korea and Japan is well within range of what they might want to do.

I'm trusting in the Lord and a good lawyer.

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service.

The main prank that we play with props is for people's birthdays. The special effects people will put a little explosive in the cake so it blows up in their face - that's always fun to play on a guest star, or one of the trainees or someone who's new.

We're just into toys, whether it's motorcycles or race cars or computers. I've got the Palm Pilot right here with me, I've got the world's smallest phone. Maybe it's just because I'm still a big little kid and I just love toys, you know?

When I do get time, I like to hike and I take lots of vitamins and powders to keep healthy.

I think it's great that she's not perfect and wasn't perfect. I think that's maybe why so many young girls and different people look up to Mac and respect her even more.

I think the reason why strong women have such a powerful impact is that you've got the strength of a man with the heart and sensitivity of a woman.

There are no captions on red-carpet photos that say, 'This girl trained for two weeks, she went on a juice diet, she has a professional hair and makeup person, and this dress was made for her.' I just wish they'd say, 'It ain't the truth.'

My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible.

Christmas in the Buckley household is hilarious - at the family dinner, we all have to do a song, no matter if you can sing in tune.

BBC3 even started their biggest shows, like Jack Whitehall's 'Bad Education,' they premiered on the iPlayer a week before it went on TV. I think it should always be at the forefront of what is fresh and exciting, and therefore it should be the first channel to exist online.

I could never understand, when I watch romantic comedies, the notion that for some reason, unattractive or heavy people don't fall in love. If they do, it's in some odd, kooky, roundabout way - and it's not. It's exactly the same.

I saw Boy George looking amazing, absolutely unbelievable, and messaged him asking for the number of his nutritionist. I got in touch with her, and she put me on this diet plan, working out which foods do and don't suit me. It's not rocket science - basically, don't eat cake, don't eat bread.

No boys liked Take That, and it was weird if you did because they danced around and wore matching clothes. But I didn't grow up with a dad who told me something was manly or not manly.

Songs that aren't even remotely connected to Christmas are now officially canonized Christmas tunes. 'Frosty the Snowman,' 'Jingle Bells' and 'Winter Wonderland' never mention anything religious but are still notches in Christmas' belt of musical dominance.

I tend to think of Pluto and its moons as presents sitting under a Christmas tree. They're wrapped, and from Earth all we can do is look at the boxes to see whether they're light or heavy, to see if something maybe jiggles a bit inside. We're seeing intriguing things, but we really don't know what's in there.

No one working as an astronomer is shackled in chains. This is a tremendous profession. There are lots of neat people, and you get to do cool things. If I had to say something negative, it's that there's often a whole lot of travel that takes me away from my children. That can be a bummer a lot of times.

There are lots of really interesting little planets out there in the Kuiper Belt, but Pluto's the only one that's got all the cool attributes.

A river is a river, independent of whether there are other rivers nearby. In science, we call things what they are based on their attributes, not what they're next to.

Typically in science, individual scientists make up their minds about scientific fact or theory one at a time. We don't take votes. We just don't vote on quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, why the sky is blue, or anything else.

Competition-driven innovation and price pressure that commercial practices foster can only make human spaceflight ever more common and U.S. leadership in this domain ever clearer.