We need to make friends with ourselves. We are stuck with our self all day, so let's be kinder, gentler, more amusing company. Let's take our own hand and say, 'There, there, sister. You're doing a good job. I'm proud of how you're handling all this craziness down here. Don't give up. Carry on, warrior.'

I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses - because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing 'trends' rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us.

My greatest fear is that I'll fail my kids.

We'll tell fear it can come along with us in our minivan, okay? But we'll just tell fear it can't drive. Sometimes we'll tell it to not even talk. Like when we tell our kids, 'Enough. No words.' We're going to play the quiet game with fear. Fear is not the boss of us.

My love for artichokes comes from when I was very young. My mother and father would slice the hearts and fry them, and they would be crispy around the leaves and tender at the base.

I am fourth-generation deaf, which means everyone in my immediate family is deaf. So I grew up always having 100 percent accessibility to language and communication, which was wonderful and something so many deaf people don't have.

Whatever he does should be seen as working at the Presidency and if he goes to Colorado for Christmas, it should be for a minimum amount of time, the family tradition and family get-together aspect emphasized, and it be seen as a working vacation.

My father believed a real man didn't read, and my parents hoped I'd get some sense and find a job in insurance.