Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I had jobs that I loved. I worked in city government. I ran a youth organization. I served as an associate dean at a university. And I couldn't imagine how a baby would fit into all of that.

My family didn't have a lot of money, so I worked my heart out to get my degrees. But the minute I graduated, suddenly everyone was asking me, 'Well, when are you going to get married and start having kids?' And the truth is I had no idea how I would balance the expected role of wife and mother with a challenging career.

My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can't make snap decisions. You can't have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

Loyalty to the family must be merged into loyalty to the community, loyalty to the community into loyalty to the nation, and loyalty to the nation into loyalty to mankind. The citizen of the future must be a citizen of the world.

People come up to me all the time. If I'm with friends or in a crowd, I'm fine, but if I'm by myself, I get afraid because people are nuts.

I learned Hollywood is a small community, and you really have to be a part of the community to get anything done. Unlike traditional industries, where you can do things from afar with phone calls and e-mail, this town is really about being social. Because that's how trust gets built.

What was weird for me after 'Amelie' was how people look at you. It moves all your relationships and sometimes even your intimate ones, and you don't understand why suddenly everything around you changes, because you are exactly the same person.