I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

Believe it or not, lots of people change their majors and abandon their dreams just to avoid a couple of math classes in college.

We believe that housing is a power platform to spark great opportunities in people's lives and help them achieve the American dream.

The president of CBS handpicked me for the 'Star Search' revival, which Arsenio Hall hosted. He picked 12 comics, and I was the only female. I always look to that as inspiration.

I think of the Tamil poet Subrahmanya Bharati every day, and he is an inspiration in my musical creations.