I'm aware that beyond my own need to find a personal balance, I should be sending a signal to society as women's minister about the importance of work-life balance.

We need everyone to be a feminist. Feminism is the fight for the equality of sexes, not for the domination of one sex over another.

It's important to understand that one gender is not superior to the other.

School is at once a place of hope, but it's also a laboratory that exposes our differences.

I'm from Washington state - a pretty small town there called Puyallup. I was really into the arts there. I sang in choirs and did singing competitions. I also did a whole lot of theater; I did high school, and then I started doing some community theater. I decided that was the kind of thing I wanted to study in college.

The thing about being a university teacher is that you're fairly tolerant about young people saying things they shouldn't have said.

In Barack Obama, we have a great education president who is rebuilding America. His Race to the Top program is doing more to 'spur us' to improve our public schools than anything we've ever done as a nation.

Acting, to me, is about the incredible adventure of examining the landscape of human heart and soul. That's basically what we do.