Growing up without my parents by my side is a weight I still carry today.

I think despite what we've seen on TV, people like seeing women and knowing about women's stories and their struggles and their truth. I think we've seen it in a lot of these shows - when there's a cast of all women, it does very well.

When I've been asked in the past about my dream role, I always expressed how much I'd like to be a superhero.

Once I started advancing in my career, I stopped wanting to hide from my reality.

The chalkboards are no longer cutting it. We've got to adapt education at every level to this new paradigm to keep our kids competitive. Affordability of technology has to be at the forefront of everything we do.

We need sex education in schools, but we need it at home first. We need parents to learn the names of the teachers who are teaching their children. We need families to question day-care centers, to question other children and their own as to what goes on.

One of the hallmarks of higher education and of democracy is the ability to converse with people with whom we disagree.

My view, as one who taught it, is that the whole purpose of a literary education should be to tell people that these things exist. I don't think any teacher should try to 'teach an author,' but rather simply describe what the author has written. And this is what I tried to do.