Grit can't be measured on pop quizzes, but it can often predict long-term success more than mere intelligence.

A big reason I'd spent my career as a writer and not a public speaker is that I am a person who refines my worldview in a silent room, waiting for my thoughts to arrange themselves on the screen before me.

My grandfather arrived in Houston in 1942 as a refugee from Nazi Germany. He had lost everything - his profession, his language, his money - but the city welcomed him, as it has hundreds of thousands of immigrants over the years.

In my career as a writer, I preferred to avoid current events: I wrote young adult novels and book reviews and lifestyle journalism about health and parenting and other such evergreens.

No one pursued music professionally in my family but they are all music lovers.

I love being healthy. I get a lot of sleep. I'm a girl who eats. And I feel beautiful no matter how I look. I have my family to thank for that.

As a Punjabi, you only have to look at your own family's past to find horror stories about arranged marriages and brutality.

Michael Jackson has some contact with his mother. I know she is involved with the children.