My New Year's Resolution List usually starts with the desire to lose between ten and three thousand pounds.

I think the goal is parity: I try to be pro-woman without being anti-man, and I hope and wish that men could do the same in that when they look at the screenplay, they say, 'Wait, wait, wait - is my daughter represented here, is my wife represented here? Is my sister represented?'

The candid and honest and pure heartedness of children has strengthened my views that we are all equal and should be afforded the basic human rights that we all deserve.

When I wanted to go away to college in Toronto, my dad said, 'You can't go.' When I got to Toronto, I bought a couch, and my dad cried for the whole weekend because, as my mum told me, 'Now you have furniture; he knows you are never coming back.'

To inspire children is my goal. Kids need adults to help them. Behind the success of a child is an adult.

I was perhaps lucky to be born in a single-parent home where my mother, Shirin Mohammed Ali, was the sole figure I revered. My father's absence in my life in my formative years exposed me to only one person, who was my source of learning the lessons of life. So to me, listening to a woman and her worldly view is almost automatic.

What the world needs today more than anything else is an implicit faith in God, our Father, and in Jesus Christ, His Son, as the Redeemer of the world.

The root cause of xenophobia in Russia is not religious differences between Muslims and Christians. Nor is it crime. The root cause is the terrible education that children acquire on the street, at school, and at home.