If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, 'To marry a plastic surgeon.' You can hardly blame me: I was growing up in Miami.

French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references.

Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them.

Practically every time I speak up at a school conference, a political event, or my apartment building association's annual meeting, I'm met with a display of someone else's superior intelligence.

The decision to join or not join a service union, political party or other organization should be left up to the individual. No such organization has the right to take money out of the pockets of state workers without their proper consent.

There was a time when I just didn't have the opportunities, which meant going without things in my life - whether it was clothes, or food, or money - and living a really bare-bones life.

The structural changes of globalization and automation that has created concentrated wealth among some people who have had the right skills and the right opportunities has also created extraordinary disruption and havoc among the American middle-class.

I took some time off after 'Titanic' because I needed to let the dust settle and recharge my battery. I felt, 'OK, you've been given a tremendous opportunity; what are you going to do with it? Now your name can finance movies that you do want to do.'