I have a hard time understanding how cutting the program in our country that provides healthcare to working families by $800 billion can be classified as mercy.

There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering.

If you believe that the greatest challenge you've got is credibility, then the way you get that is you earn it, right? That's not something that any set of policy makers can bestow.

Compromise' isn't supposed to be a dirty word. It is, in fact, how representative democracy works.

I was the first person in the family to be an actor.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it's easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as luxuries, we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our well-being and survival.

It's really good to have so distinctive a name as an actress. No one ever forgets it. My sister and brother are called Perdita and Rollo. Actually, my family calls me 'Hollyhocks.'