I'm aware that beyond my own need to find a personal balance, I should be sending a signal to society as women's minister about the importance of work-life balance.

We need everyone to be a feminist. Feminism is the fight for the equality of sexes, not for the domination of one sex over another.

It's important to understand that one gender is not superior to the other.

School is at once a place of hope, but it's also a laboratory that exposes our differences.

I've never met a person who does not want a safer world, better medical care and education for their children, and peace with their neighbours. I just don't meet those people. What I meet, over and over again, as I travel around, is that the essential human condition is optimistic - in every one of these places.

When you home study, you get a better education. I basically got to teach myself. Being naturally able to make my own opinions about the schoolwork I had to deal with, instead of being instructed under the tutelage of the teacher, was really nice academically.

When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, convinced me that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with 'Georgia on My Mind.'

When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.