I think I'm well on the way of overcoming a very big hurdle that's been in my way for several years. Which is trying to find a way to not let the insecurity of my profession get the better of me and make me crazy. I'm trying to find a way to maintain my own personal balance in the midst of everything.

When I was very young I wanted to be a professional horseback rider. Then I wanted to be a pop singer. Then I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Then I wanted to be a movie director.

I just want to tell stories that have an impact on people. Somebody needs to have an impact because people are lost. People are really lost.

Everything I thought about acting and having a movie career has changed from what I thought when I started.

I got married at 19 and graduated from a commuter college in Texas that cost $50 a semester. The way I see it, I'm a janitor's daughter who became a public school teacher, a professor, and a United States Senator. America is truly a country of opportunity!

I'd gone to Wellesley College, an amazing women's college where the students were encouraged to follow our dreams. However, after I graduated and had a historical romance published, more than a few people indicated that, in some way, my career choice was a 'waste' of so much education.

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.

We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt.