Most people try to isolate themselves and pretend like things are all good when a lot of times, that's not how it is.

I want to go somewhere where I can be completely immersed in football, and it's not too much about anything but winning - I want to be a part of winning culture, where you feel that all the time. That's all I want.

New Orleans is a great place, a place of celebration. But on the other hand, there's a reality to it, there's violence, there's misguided youth.

I try to speak from a place of understanding and most times I'm speaking from a place of experience.

Learning of my father's passing at age 55 not only shattered the world, far from home, that had become my reality, but catapulted my childhood and relationship with family - which had felt like another lifetime - into the present.

How many mothers have emerged from a family trip to a Disney movie and been obliged to explain the facts of death to their sobbing young? A conservative estimate: the tens of millions, since the studio's first animated feature, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' premiered in 1937.

When I was a kid, our family used to watch 'Bonanza.' I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual.

As a child, I loved to sing. When I was 8, my mother sent my brother and me to a summer music theater program in Texas. We did 'Guys and Dolls' at the camp, and I was so depressed when it was over. That's when I realized that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.