You know, my family is very musical, I was surrounded by it. And from four years old I was the one that asked my mother could I take piano lessons.
I came from Canada when I was about 10 years old, and our family settled in Cleveland, Ohio.
For a couple of years at the end of the 1970s, Dustin Hoffman was a fixture in our family. My father was his lawyer and friend.
After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.
Acting is something I've done since I was six years old, performing for my mum and my family in the living room, and I do it because my heart's in it.
I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.
I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.
You get more churches burned down in the United States in the last two years than in the last hundred, because of the lack of understanding of culture and diversity and the beauty of it.
During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.
After six years at Le Cirque, I decided to start my own business. I opened Daniel at 76th Street in May '93.
Couture has copied my things for years, in addition to countless other costume designers, claiming theirs were the original ideas. It's all part of the business, unfortunately.
However, the economics of our business continued to deteriorate. We barely escaped bankruptcy a year ago, and in the aftermath of that escape we had to make some even tougher decisions.
I started missing acting when I was in school, and I realized after being in the business after however many years that I was really interested in film.
In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue.
Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.
In business, we say that people overestimate what you can do in a year and underestimate what you can do in a decade. This is true in philanthropy as well.
Many have been with the show for years, and they have sources in the business, so we do know things, but until it is verified, we don't run with the story.
What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question 'Can we trust Microsoft?'
I wanted to be in this business, and once I got into the business I knew I enjoyed it, and I liked it, and I wanted to continue, but I never had a five year plan.
I used to run record companies, and I went to the advertising business at 29 years old.
After 25 years in business, Mitt Romney understands how jobs come and go, and what we need to do to get our economy back on track.
