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.

I know the war in Iraq is controversial in the States, but for us in the Middle East it has made a great and significant impact.

But if republicans are to prevail, if the peace process is to be successfully concluded and Irish sovereignty and re-unification secured, then we have to set the agenda - no-one else is going to do that.

I would not be able to keep going at the pace that I do if I had continued at the weight that I was. I feel so much better; I eat better. I sleep better. I actually enjoy exercise.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.