Maybe I was just lucky but I had the best pregnancy and I loved giving birth. It was just the most amazing thing so surreal but so real.

Giving birth was the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'd been living in a Third World country and I said 'I'm going to just squat behind a tree.' I basically did that but in a chair in my living room. I didn't want a sterile hospital room. I didn't want doctors. I had a midwife.

I've got some incredible fans actually - so loyal and they make me birthday cards and Christmas cards. I got this package of poems and artwork based around the songs. They've got this thing called 'Floetry' where they all have to put in artwork. They've set up their own competitions and stuff which is kind of amazing.

My best kiss was on stage. Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child gave me a really nice soft kiss on my lips during a performance on my birthday. It was amazing.

Childbirth is more admirable than conquest more amazing than self-defense and as courageous as either one.

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth that without them no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.

This communication alone by the comparison of the antagonisms rivalries movements which give birth to decisive moments permits the evolution of the soul whereby a man realizes himself on earth. It is impossible to be concerned with anything else in art.

At the moment of childbirth every woman has the same aura of isolation as though she were abandoned alone.

I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas.

We can no longer waste time and money. Every day more than 2 000 girls in America age 15-19 give birth - in the wealthiest most educated nation in the world! Neither you nor I should accept this statistic.

But look I was born in 1956 the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and by and large people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.

If you read back in the Bible the letter of the apostle Paul to the church of Thessalonia he said that in the latter days before the end of the age that the Earth would be caught up in what he called the birth pangs of a new order.

I cried on my 18th birthday. I thought 17 was such a nice age. You're young enough to get away with things but you're old enough too.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.