Touring is tough. You're almost in a haze because you don't really know where you are half the time: You're in a hotel room one moment and the next thing you know you're onstage performing for 60 000 people then you're back on an airplane. It's very hectic and I couldn't do it without my family.

I married him because he told me it was the only way he could protect me. If we were just manager and client my family could do whatever they wanted to get me back but if I was his wife they couldn't.

The breakdown of the black community in order to maintain slavery began with the breakdown of the black family. Men and women were not legally allowed to get married because you couldn't have that kind of love. It might get in the way of the economics of slavery. Your children could be taken from you and literally sold down the river.

A few years ago you couldn't go from TV to film. It was like a 'no no' but I believe when you find a plan and purpose that God has for your life there's not anything man can do to you. Especially when your faith is not really standing in the wisdom of man you're really standing in the wisdom of God.

I don't really go down one path. I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist or a Catholic or a Christian or a Muslim or Jewish. I couldn't put myself into any organized faith.

We decided to try in vitro because both Peter and I felt we couldn't handle another failure. When I miscarried after that we had to come to terms with the possibility that this wasn't meant to be.

It has always felt like a failure that Bjorn and I couldn't keep our family together. You never get it back but to this day I don't regret splitting up. The reason behind our separation is one of those things I definitely don't want to go into!

I - and I still consider myself I'm sorry to tell you a Marxist and a Communist but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure.

It was a very bizarre experience for me to get the songs together go in there and try to deliver them as I would perhaps in a live setting. But I realized that I couldn't take on that coffeehouse style that I came from and go in there and burn it up.

The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela where I couldn't find a place for myself for years and years.

If one area I felt it was a tough election was I couldn't see my young son and I couldn't see my wife a lot but apart from that for her also it was an experience.

The bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.

I'd done table reads for my own screenplays and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.

I had some experience in dealing with people who have mental illness and depression but I didn't see the signs in myself. I couldn't ask for help because I didn't know I needed help.

Earlier feminists were almost universally pro-choice and have dominated political debate until now. Having access to abortion was viewed as the only way women could have full equality with men who until recently couldn't get pregnant.

I believe I've always been a big believer in equality. No one has ever been able to tell me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.

OK in all seriousness I would say I couldn't be in a relationship without equality generosity integrity spirit kindness and humor. And awesomeness.