I don't personally try to balance my work because I operate under the assumption that anyone reading or watching my stuff isn't having a particularly balanced day anyway. But negative attitudes just amuse me more than positive ones.

When people ask me about my story I just go through the positive stuff: the tent-pole moments the big landmark checkpoints.

If it's great stuff the people who consume it are nourished. It's a positive force.

When I first started working in politics as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.

Politics is not bean bags. It's serious tough stuff.

Well I write a lot of poetry - that's where it usually all starts. I definitely want to show you guys sides of me - love loss heartbreak - all of that good stuff!

One of the things I've always liked about my husband is he's very good at lots of stuff. He was an English teacher when I met him. He wrote poetry and played the guitar. As time went on he decided to go into economics so he's very analytical and mathematical in addition to his artsy side.

Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm well-being and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga.

At this point we've answered about every question you could possibly imagine about Deep Space Nine so we do this thing called Theatrical Jazz where we do a show of bits and pieces of things from plays and literature poetry... stuff that we like. It's fun.

PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy.

Bad quirky poetry might be better than some of the good stuff because it really comes from the heart.

Poetry is at the centre of my life too emotionally speaking and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that so putting songs together wasn't that spectacular.

There are things that I invented - the creaky geriatric robot that is always grumpy for example or the little wheelie guy he's not in the Hasbro lore. But kids love that stuff - this little guy as a pet on a chain. They gravitate towards it.

The business of peace requires more than showing up with paint brushes foodstuffs and an oil pipeline or two.

I've done an awful lot of stuff that's a monument to public patience.

I'm a parent especially when you've had the intense parenting the way I had. It's all in the bank. It's all in the great experience bank. Those are your secrets. That's the stuff that makes your work rich that's what you dip into.

Here take back the stuff that I am nature knead it back into the dough of being make of me a bush a cloud whatever you will even a man only no longer make me me.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene to cry or whatever I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me.

I don't listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff. It's all quite dramatic and atmospheric. You'd have an entire story in song. I never listen to like white music - I couldn't sing you a Zeppelin or Floyd song.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean the heavy metal from the '70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the '80s and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the '90s. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it and where it was recorded what year it was done what they were listening to and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior.