Beauty is a gift, just like good health or intelligence. The only thing is not to be proud of being beautiful. Because you didn't do anything - it was given to you.

Everybody does what she needs. And if you want plastic surgery, and then you feel better, why not? There is no law. I've nothing against using something to help your beauty - but do it in a good way, with intelligence.

It's complicated coming from a culture where to be a mother is more important than to have a career.

I think the lawyers are such incredible actors. Can you imagine the performance they have to do every day?

In my final year at Bristol University, I wrote a play called 'White Feathers.' It was produced in the studio theatre at the students' union in early 1999, when I was 21. It's 100 pages long: a very traditional play, with an interval, about deserters in the First World War.

Indeed, we're strongest when the face of America isn't only a soldier carrying a gun but also a diplomat negotiating peace, a Peace Corps volunteer bringing clean water to a village, or a relief worker stepping off a cargo plane as floodwaters rise.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?