If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, 'To marry a plastic surgeon.' You can hardly blame me: I was growing up in Miami.

French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references.

Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them.

Practically every time I speak up at a school conference, a political event, or my apartment building association's annual meeting, I'm met with a display of someone else's superior intelligence.

Most of the 9/11 hijackers weren't married, none of them had families inside the United States, and there's no evidence that any family members moved before, during, or after 9/11.

In Cambodia, education is really a luxury, and many kids are thrown into work as early as possible. This means they can help support their parents, as often the parents don't even earn a living wage.

I have really musical parents, and my dad was always encouraging, but the desire to get onstage and perform really did come from me. I'd never push my future children.

As young kids, we had a lot of tenacity. Life was tough at home, so it was easy to go out in the world and try.