Corporate America was hurling offers at her. Thinking even bigger, wanting even more, she had dreams of starting a Martha Stewart magazine and starring in her own regularly scheduled Martha Stewart television show. Martha saw herself as Betty Crocker, Julia Child, Miss Manners, Emily Post, and Rupert Murdoch all rolled into one juicy pie.

Like many children of the rich and famous, Paris Hilton didn't always get to spend quality time with her parents, especially her mother. A socially ambitious young woman, Kathleen Elizabeth Avanzino Richards Hilton, who had married into the celebrated Hilton Hotel family, was often out and about.

Through the international hotel empire, the Hilton name has become synonymous with class and sophistication.

It's like being a gym rat, but you're a theater rat, and then that becomes your fraternity house. That becomes your extended family.

The Internet has become a tool to pick on people and ruin someone's life. I don't think parents realize what's going on. Just because you're not at school doesn't mean kids aren't harassing you on the computer.

My grandmother raised five children during the Depression by herself. At 50, she threw her sewing machine into the back of a pickup truck and drove from North Dakota to California. She was a real survivor, so that's my stock. That's how I want my kids to be too.

I was raised in a very blue-collar family.