I'm a single parent, a working mother, an executive, and an author. My greatest accomplishment will be to raise three wonderful children.

New York City is a very tough place. I'm tough, too. When people give me a punch in the nose, I react by getting even tougher.

I made a tremendous amount of money on real estate. I'll take real estate rather than go to Wall Street and get 2.8 percent. Forget about it.

I make money because I have to pay for everything apart from my school fees. My mother even makes me pay my own telephone bill.

For the first time ever I was taking the family on the road. We stayed with my in-laws, which on life's list of experiences ranks right below sitting in a tub full of scissors.

She may hide it, but Clinton is a policy nerd. Ask about microfinance, and she'll talk your ear off. Mention early childhood interventions, and she will gush about obscure details of a home visitation experiment in Elmira, N.Y., that dramatically improved child outcomes.

I'm from a working-class family. We didn't have a lot, but we had the arts. You're talking to a guy who is making a living at doing what he loves doing - acting, singing and dancing. So any career ups and downs were not that significant to me; the only things that really powerfully impinged on me were my losses, and there were many in my life.

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.