With my writing, because I live it, I have to be consumed by it, and that means you have to forget your other life, which is constantly pulling you from your work.
As a child, I was an observer, a listener for the stories of grown-ups. I led a quiet, solitary life with my mother, interrupted in the evenings by the arrival of my father who preferred to live in a state of emergency.
It was just this interesting, my first, the first time you hear your child in any way criticise you. It's the worst review of your life and it's really relieving to find out that they don't know what they're saying.
No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.
I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.
It's terrifying, that unconditional love you have for a child. I still wonder if she really came from me, from my womb. It's a miracle. I don't understand it. I live it very intensely.
My fans kept asking where they could get clothes like 'Destiny's Child's', so it was only natural for us to do a clothing line. I was adamant about not putting my name on something that I didn't love.
I didn't have a fireworks moment for my salvation. I had a falling in love with Jesus in Sunday school when I was a very young child.
I didn't know I'd ever be able to love my second child like I love my first; she came out, and I was amazed I could love them both equally.
No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always feel the same challenge - how do you shape this story into a book that people are going to love.
Dancing is my number one love. That was my first goal as a child. I would love to do stage, maybe do Chicago. I love being in front of an audience. It's so stimulating. I also love to barbecue.
Like every child growing up in America, I read 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' I liked them well enough, but I didn't love them.
I really like being pregnant. Not that there aren't things I don't love, but when I think about what my body is doing - creating a child - it just blows my mind. I'm in awe of the process and science.
As far as female vocalists, I love Heart, Joan Jett, Courtney Love, Laura Branigan, Linda Ronstadt, Barbra Streisand - or going back to when I was a child, Aileen Quinn, the original Annie.
I love being a grandmother. That feeling you have for your own child - you don't ever think it will be replicated, and I did wonder if I would have to 'pretend' with my grandchildren. But my heart was taken on day one.
Every parent craves for a child, and once their wishes come true, they feel that it's not possible for them to love anyone more that the first born. But the fact is, after you have the second issue, the feeling is, how can I not love the kid?
What a dichotomy. What conflicting ideas that we love and embrace these women, and entrust them to raise our children and to feed us and to bathe us, but we keep something as silly as a bathroom separate.
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
The land of failure and misery isn't where you temporarily or permanently belong. You are a royal child of God, and definitely have a specially reserved place in the territory of success and happiness.
As a small child, me and my pals fantasised about one day owning an ice-cream van. To have ice creams on demand would have been a dream come true.
I was real into theater, and then I tried soccer, acting and ballet. Both my parents didn't want a child-star model, so I didn't get into modeling until I was 14.
