I'll never stop dreaming that one day we can be a real family, together, all of us laughing and talking, loving and understanding, not looking at the past but only to the future.

J has told me about his past. I know what happened and why. But he is the one person who made me believe in my talent and whatever happened in the past, he's been a wonderful manager to me.

I married him because he told me it was the only way he could protect me. If we were just manager and client, my family could do whatever they wanted to get me back, but if I was his wife, they couldn't.

It was so strange. I knew that Josephine Baker had performed on the same stage but that night I felt it. Many of the same people who worked with Josephine Baker are still here. They know what they're doing. And that was a very comfortable feeling.

My mother left behind three daughters when she went to America and started a new life. I certainly felt abandoned when my father died of a brain tumour; I felt he had abandoned me to this terrible, volatile mother and I had no protection.

The work-family divide is the biggest issue for American women. But in some ways it's amazing how adjusted society has become to it. In the 1970s, as women began to take more jobs, society was reeling.

Women are, in my view, natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life, through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life, they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities.

We are in the era when I go home and have dinner with my kids and put them to bed, and hours later I go to Twitter, and the world has changed.