My dad said to me growing up: 'When all is said and done if you can count all your true friends on one hand you're a lucky man.'

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.

I hated the idea of a high school sweetheart. Growing up oh my God it just made me sick. I wanted to have a range of cool boyfriends. I wanted to travel around and date these interesting men. Then it just happened. You fall in love.

Being a kid and growing up is such a cool part of life.

I never felt cool growing up. I was a bit of an outsider but I discovered theatre very early on which got me through.

Sometimes guys are so concerned with being cool and hanging out with their friends. They don't want to seem like the guy that 'has to call his girlfriend.' It's just boys growing up.

New York had a big influence on me growing up and I was really part of the club scene - the Mudd Club and Studio 54. When you're living in New York you are just bombarded with style trying to figure out how to be cool and how to feel relaxed at the same time.

I think it's really cool but Jimmy Eat World and Gin Blossoms did it better than anyone. People don't realize just how awesome the Arizona history is especially for alternative music. Growing up that's all I ever wanted to be was those two bands.

All this stuff is so mind-blowing to me that I get to do in my life. Throwing the first pitch out at the White Sox game on a random Wednesday? Like who am I? How did I get this life? I'm glad I'm not jaded and little kids are the least jaded people in the entire world so it's fun to be around people that still find wonder in how cool things are.

Growing up politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama's camp and Obama himself reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We've sat and had dinner and we've spoken on the phone. He's a very sharp guy. Very charming. Very cool.

Cynicism is kind of like folding your arms and stepping back and commenting on things like the old guys in 'The Muppets ' just throwing out comments all the time whereas there are other people on the ground really trying to affect things and improve their lives and the lives of other people. I think it's noble and I think it's cool.

It was a very cool thing to be a smart girl as opposed to some other different kind. And I think that made a great deal of difference to me growing up and in my life afterward.

With our work at Kazaa we began seeing growing broadband connections and more powerful computers and more streaming multimedia and we saw that the traditional way of communicating by phone no longer made a lot of sense.

I didn't know folk music growing up no. It's something I've come to study really because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication the traveling storyteller the bard the minstrels.

My kid could get a bad X-ray and I could get a call from the doctor saying I have something growing in my bum and that would change my perspective on everything instantaneously on what is and what is not important.

I'd be happy to be taken as a woman - and that's what I was initially trying to do when I started throwing on dresses and stuff. But that wasn't going to happen because everyone kept calling me sir. So I thought I'd change the method and just start wearing what I wanted to wear.

People lose people we lose things in our life as we're constantly growing and changing. That's what life is is change and a lot of that is loss. It's what you gain from that loss that makes life.

Girls are taught to sing high and pretty like Antony not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we're slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we're not told growing up and it's our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it.

Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.

As I have said for many years throughout this land we're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization. Every bit of that has to change.

Growing up in the Midwest people don't drive Porsches and Ferraris. They drive Fords and Chevys. And so even if you have the opportunity to buy a more expensive car it doesn't occur to you because it's not what you relate to.

The United Nations four or five years ago put out a study that said the meat industry meat-eating growing meat for food is the No. 1 killer of our planet - not No. 2 or No. 3: No 1. You know what's No. 2? Transportation. Everyone thinks that No. 1 is transportation and goes out and buys a hybrid car. Screw the hybrid cars. Don't eat hamburgers.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh I was proud.

I borrowed my friend's car the other day in an attempt to persuade my husband that we needed a car and literally this is true in the first day of borrowing the car I got three tickets and I rear-ended it.