My daughters your daughters our daughters deserve safety protection and the freedom to make their own choices about their personal lives and their physical selves.

So keep fightin' for freedom and justice beloveds but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous ridicule the fraidy-cats rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

I'm privileged because I have a lot of freedom. I want to use it to make as warm and normal a life as I can for our daughters.

I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons taught us we were entitled to no matter what the sacrifice.

History has taught us over and over again that freedom is not free. When push comes to shove the ultimate protectors of freedom and liberty are the brave men and women in our armed forces. Throughout our history they've answered the call in bravery and sacrifice.

There are necessary evils. Money is an important thing in terms of representing freedom in our world. And now I have a daughter to think about. It's really the first time I've thought about the future and what it could be.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led like sheep to the slaughter.

'Caught' is a novel of forgiveness and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn't be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills or it won't work.

I was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me. She washed our clothes cooked our food she did everything for us. I don't think I ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.

I do eat well. I try to love my body. That is what I tell my daughter. I say 'Love every bite of food. Love your body. We're all going to be dead soon.' Actually I don't say that last thing to her.

Many people in the world today are not starving because there is an inherent inability to produce food they are starving because they are caught in the middle of political fights and blockades that have been used as weapons.

This June I'll travel once again to the Food and Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen Colorado. For many years my dear friend Julia Child and I have teamed up to teach classes together at the event for the past seven years my daughter Claudine has been my cooking partner on stage.

My mom who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.

If my daughter wants to get into this business I would support that decision. She's going to have a hard time not being in it. She loves food and she's around it all the time.

I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient I could be qualifying for like the lunch food job at my daughter's school.

The way you deal with a scare is the way you deal with a laugh. The timing has to be perfect. When you're dealing with fear or laughter - emotions that happen spontaneously - you hope it's working. But in the moment you really have no idea.

The fear of the never-ending onslaught of gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. The radio the telephone Facebook - each of these inventions changed the world. Each of them scared the heck out of an older generation. And each of them was invented by people who were in their 20s.

They did interviews with my wife and daughter-they were genuinely in fear of me having a heart attack working 20 hours a day eating fast food.

Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us that is taught to us when we are very very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.

You always fear when you're making a movie that has a moral to the story that people are going to reject the idea of being taught a lesson.

Comedy is defiance. It's a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it's the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

I write for those women who do not speak for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us but it won't.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I still had a daughter who I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.