Growing up with the childhood that I had, I learned to never let a man make me feel helpless, and it also embedded a deep need in me to always stick up for women.

People don't always want to have females as leaders.

The most vulnerable people have tough exteriors because they are very scared inside, and it's very hard for people like that - people like me - to open up. But playing it safe means you stop being open to learning. I always try to find the challenges.

I look back at the looks I've had over the years. I'm proud of myself that I had the courage to experiment with crazy hairstyles and some fashion things. Would I do it again? No. But that's part of the learning process and getting from point A to point B.

I'm a first - I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing.

You know, when you look carefully at stuff that you deal with everyday, applying a little creativity to it and thinking outside the box, it's amazing what you can do.

I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don't do.

Modern art, in particular, seems especially vulnerable to fraud. Its abstractions are sometimes difficult to understand or grasp, and a modern painting is often loved less because of its intrinsic quality - its beauty, as conventionally understood - than because of the identity of the painter, its mark of social status.