I feel like the Roses were a great group, but I never wanted to try to do it again. I knew I couldn't get a band that would compare to the Roses, that would have an impact like the Roses.

We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben.

If I was in the gutter, and my kids lived on the kerb, I'd go and get a job in B&Q before I'd reform the Roses. I gave everything I had to the Stone Roses and ended up hitting a brick wall. I'm never going to give anyone a foothold on that wall again.

When you live in Manchester and it's raining every day, you've got to imagine the sun sometimes. When you're brought up in concrete, you aim for the green leaves. And when you get to the green leaves, you yearn again for concrete.

For the past 32 years, I've done nothing outside the entertainment business. I've had some real highs and some real lows, but I love the work so much that I never once thought of quitting.

Personal ambition is 'I want to be CEO.' Greater vision ambition is, 'I want to lead this company so that people want to work here.'

My first job now is as a mother, everything else is secondary. My kids understand that I am an actress, and they are always so surprised to hear my voice on a cartoon character, or see my face on a video box. If it ever gets to be too much though, the career and the kids, I will simply set the career aside.

I went to Wellesley College, and it was really hard for me to get a job after I graduated. I would go into places where I would not see any black people at all in Boston - like, zero. And then in publishing in New York City, it was pretty much the same. I knew that it wasn't about the value of my work.