The truth was that, you know, there was no reason to send me to Shattuck Military School. But it was a disciplinarian school.

Women are just more oriented toward feelings - and I don't mean that in a negative way. But with a male actor and a male director, the emotional exploration can only go so far. With a female director, you can end up exploring so many more depths.

We truly have an ancient part of the brain that was about survival when we were prey but we seem to have gone past prey. We eat everything and nothing eats us.

After Civil Rights, it was very awkward for whites and blacks. We didn't know how to talk to each other.

In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radiation and what have you. But a positive mental attitude does not cure cancer - any more than a negative mental attitude causes cancer.

So I've broadened the fitness concept to make it one of moderation and balance.

Have you noticed that the meanest, shrillest, least compassionate and most heartless people who are well off and have all the medical coverage they'll ever need are seemingly sickened beyond cure by the notion that someone who literally cannot afford health care is somehow beneath contempt and must be vilified and humiliated?

When I had cancer - of the colon first, followed by breast cancer and a mastectomy - my motto used to be 'Drips by day, Prada by night.' I felt that I had to grasp it in the same way as you'd take on any challenge.