I was going to go to Europe to study, and that's when my mother's disease heightened, and it was really necessary that I step in. Then I said, okay, this is more important than my career in music.

I was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and we lived there for three to five years - with my mother and father. And then they divorced and she came back to America.

I knew she was famous, but she was my mom, a regular mom.

Frank Sinatra was a popular star, but he was always so sweet and friendly to me that I was excited just to be next to him.

Writing can be a tough gig. Whenever you do something in which you put yourself out there - if that becomes the focus of your life, you miss the point of living. You've really got to get the grounding of family and the things that are important in your life and make that your focus.

Within a life that seems uncomfortably scripted by family and community pressures, hyper-religiosity can provide a way to break with parental expectations and flee from parental control.

I'm a mother with two small children, so I don't take as much crap as I used to.

I do strongly identify with being Jewish. I was raised Orthodox and had a childhood complicated by the fact that my father was deeply religious and my mother was not.