Growing up, when I was younger, I didn't feel all that tough or smart or strong. As I got older, I was able to discover my own strength.

I was obsessed with Nancy Drew growing up - I couldn't get enough.

It's wonderful that we're portraying women in this way so that young women can see that women actually are strong and capable of accomplishing all kinds of things.

It's cool to be a female character who gets to be really strong and tough.

Deciding together to have a child and sharing in child-rearing do not immunize a marriage. Indeed, collaborative couples can face other problems. They often embark on such an intense style of parenting that they end up paying less attention to each other.

My father and his brothers never mentioned to their English wives and children that they were Jewish. Being Hungarian was exotic and foreign enough to begin with, and so long as they were not asked, they found it easier, from 1919 on, to let the matter drop.

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.

I want to be on stage and perform and win Grammys and help out my family in Bulgaria, because they are struggling, and my mom and dad, too.