My top goal as your Secretary of State is to save lives by reducing fatal traffic crashes. When I established the Teen Driver Safety Task Force, the goal was to improve Illinois' graduated driver licensing law and, even more importantly, to save lives.

I tell the people that hire us, if we don't get a standing ovation when we're finished with our performance, it's free - and we've always been paid.

You cannot imagine how many people called, how many letters, how many emails. Every place I go, people ask me, 'Please, don't quit.'

I first met Dr. King in 1954 when I was a student at Alabama State University and a member of a local church down there. He was in town to organize a rally against public transportation. Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, which was illegal back then.

I remember I took an editorial, and I was so excited. I got the pictures back, and I looked in the magazine, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh!' My arms were half their size, and I had a thigh gap magically, and all these crazy things. My family went out and tried to find my pictures in the magazines, but no one could recognize me.

Unfortunately, many parents reject helmets for their kids out of a mistaken perception that helmets are unsafe for children.

Many friends of mine told me that normally only guys like a kung fu movie and the girls would be turned off - they want to see a love story. But Ip Man is a family man, so the women see this and go: 'I want my husband to be like this man. He'll be a scholar, he'll be fighting, he'll care for the family.' So we had a bigger audience.

I come from a family of teachers, and I believe ideas matter; the good ones deserve reverence, and the bad ones, defiance.