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.

It is easy to fall into despair thinking about all that is wrong with the world. The joys seems so small in comparison. Internet videos of cats riding Roombas just can't compete with a father talking about how his dead 13-year-old son had wanted to be a pilot.

It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the 'bad girl' or the 'good girl' or the 'bad mother' or 'the good mother,' 'the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children' or 'the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies,' all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie.

Afterwards, when the match is over, I have my family and my friends. I have fun like a normal person.

My mother and father were born and raised in Pakistan, where religion is entrenched in the culture and the culture is explicitly unyielding.