The United States is very good at understanding itself, and very bad at understanding others.

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because she's had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.

Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics.

As a family, we didn't get into the celebrity thing. That's not what we wanted for the boys. We wanted them to play everything they could, be involved in as many school events as they could.

As an entrepreneur and mother, I support the need to put women at the center, recognizing their crucial impact on social development and their important role of balancing family and professional responsibilities.

TV is like high school because you go into these series, and the people that work there have been doing it for seven years, like 'One Tree Hill,' so you are going into what is already a family - if you are accepted by that family, then it's fantastic fun.

So I would dance and she would sing, and it was kind of a family thing. Performing was part of our world.