I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

My acting career helped pull me through the rough times.

My goal was not to be famous or rich but to be good at what I did. And that required going to New York and studying and working in the theater.

There's no place to act in Kansas. You're supressed.

Great preschools are no easier to build than great high schools, and if you think your kids might be better off in the care of a parent or with some extended family member, then a system designed around a dual-income plus day care norm will likewise feel like a burden, or a trap.

We started the family Bible after slavery was abolished. My great-grandmother remembered the Bible being started, which meant that she was a slave as a young girl. When she died, the Bible was at least 105 years old, so she must have been nearly 115 years old. Her daughter, my grandmother, died at 97, and her husband at 98.

I went to school at this log school house. A white woman was my teacher, I do not remember her name. My father had to pay her one dollar a month for me. Us kids that went to school did not have desks, we used slates and set on the hued down logs for seats.

My illness is one often characterized by dramatic overspending - in my case through frenzied shopping sprees, credit card abuse, excessive hoarding of unnecessary material goods and bizarre generosity with family, friends and even strangers.