Dying is only one thing to be sad over... Living unhappily is something else.

No actually 'The Host' was totally a palate-cleanser for me. I wanted to do something a little bit different than romantic love. Romantic love is in there obviously because I enjoy writing about that and living it a lot.

I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time but it's not part of a sensible way of living. It's a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously.

My parents started a business out of the living room of our home and 30-plus years later it was a multimillion dollar company. So President Obama with all due respect don't tell me that my parents didn't build their business.

It's a paradox to be an actress living in the city taking planes all the time trying to find the right balance in this life which is not so eco-friendly and still try to respect the environment.

We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life. And it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11 2001.

We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.

To the living we owe respect but to the dead we owe only the truth.

And what is religion you might ask. It's a technology of living.

In the early days I had a very black-and-white view of everything. I think that's kind of natural for anyone who's just embraced Islam - or any religion - as a convert. It was important for me to duck out of the fast and furious life I'd been living as a pop star. I was in a different mood.