When a lot of people are calling it a night at 2 A.M., New Orleans is coming alive.

To me, Def Jam put my career on hold. I was used to making 13-14 songs a year, and they trickled that down to nothing.

There's been enough building of fences with labels trying to categorize artists, limiting artists' ability to be themselves.

I've always had good connections with cars and always knew how to fix them, so I didn't have trouble with breakdowns.

In one way or another, President Obama's critics will dog him all the way to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and even his admirers will continue to have doubts about his accomplishments if not his promise.

My own view of this, by the way, is, if the war on terrorism is successful over time, in its own way it's going to box Saddam in in a way that's going to make it much more difficult for him to maintain his power, and that he's going to become increasingly isolated. I think that's going to take time.

My mother tried really hard to protect us, but occasionally, after afternoon cartoons of whatever was on... the nightly news would come on, and I'd see footage from the war zone, and I would hear the word 'Vietnam,' and I would know my dad was over there, and it was a very frightening experience for me.

I've been a war reporter and a human rights defender. A professor and a columnist. A diplomat and - by far most thrillingly - a mother. And what I've learned from all these experiences is that any change worth making is going to be hard. Period.