For many years, I didn't even like the idea of doing a one-person play. Public speaking got me past that. I've always been good at public speaking, but I never really enjoyed it. Then I started to really enjoy it, and that's made all the difference.

Democracy is not theater - it determines life and death!

I think especially older people, and I count myself one, in the business - people get to know who you really are. So there comes a time when you can't just go in and audition without everybody knowing exactly how you've brought up your kids, what you said at the meeting, what kind of food you cook.

Playing Ann Landers is like channeling my mother. That combination of love and the enjoyment of life is my mother. And you find that combination in Ann Landers' letters.

We really need a public-interest government that is not taking marching orders from the fossil-fuel industry and the banks and the war profiteers. We really need a government that is acting on our behalf.

I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.

It's not hard to assume that voters do not have deeply considered views on each and every policy issue before them but instead, perhaps, have one or two strongly held views and then allow their favored political leaders to fill in the gaps on the rest of the issues.

The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.