The beautiful thing about my intelligence is that it doesn't really come in one specific department. So even if something hasn't happened to me, I have information on how to get you through whatever you may be going through.
When I recorded my solo album, 'Keep It Hid,' in 2008, I'd gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language.
I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.
So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.
I absolutely believe the past had its share of warrior women who fought like men. Whether some of these were the actual Amazons from Greek myth is another matter.
I mean, I absolutely call myself a feminist. And by that, I mean a woman who believes that your opportunities should not be constrained by your gender, that women should be entitled to the same opportunities as men.
Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into 'women's books' except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.
I'm excited about becoming a transmedia storyteller. The idea that we can tell the 'Agent Mom' story online with MTV Comics and build a fan base that we can take over to Paramount to discuss turning that story it into a movie is just awesome.
Just recently I was in Target with my mom shopping, and out of the blue, I see this father and his two daughters and he says, 'Can they get a picture with you?' And I'm thinking to myself, 'Am I the one millionth customer or something?'
A friend of my mom's was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.
My mother is the most incredible woman on this entire Earth, and she's so giving and loving and sweet and she always raised me how to forgive and forget and move on. She's the catalyst behind it all, my mom is. And I'm 100% a momma's boy!
I honestly don't even know how I got into acting. It happened so quickly because my mom and sister used to do commercials, and apparently when I was little I would unbuckle myself from the stroller and crash their auditions.
As a mom, you have all these situations you go through, and you're like, 'What is going on? Is this normal? Is this a phase? Or what is this?' and then you feel silly for asking questions because you think, 'I'm a mom - I'm supposed to know these thi...
I was watching TV one day, and I'm like, 'How did those people get on TV? I'm gonna try that. Hey, mom, I want to be on TV!' And she's like, 'OK, let's get you an agent.'
I started singing when I was about 3 and dancing soon after. Mom just started looking for outlets where I could perform and availed herself of any opportunity she could in the mountains of North Carolina in the '70s.
I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.
I have my name Cory on my left arm, and I have my mom's name on my right with a cross. She passed away while I was still in high school, so I got that on my right arm.
After my mom died, there was so much written about her fashion and her style and all that, and I felt that one of the most important parts of her was missing, her real intellectual curiosity.
I think my first big purchase was actually for my mom. She had one of those '90s TVs in her living room that's like a 10x10 brick, so I purchased her a flatscreen for her living room.
My mom grew up in Idaho, went to Brigham Young University: they're very Molly Mormon. And my father is, like, first generation Albanian, and his parents lived in Southey and grew up in downtown Boston. My parents are complete opposites.
You don't realize how hard it is to live on your own. But there's no mom to do your laundry, and make you dinner and to do things for you, and you don't think about little things like buying paper towels and salt.