In the beginning when I sat next to Tom Brokaw on the 'Today' show the stories I was interested in were those having to do with women and children and learning and health. In those days 25 to 30 years ago that was called soft news and not in a nice way.

I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health because I've got other stories to tell.

Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn't worth the time and effort.

For most Americans Friday afternoons are filled with positive anticipation of the weekend. In Washington it's where government officials dump stories they want to bury. Good news gets dropped on Monday so bureaucrats can talk about it all week.

The stories that I want to tell especially as a director don't necessarily have a perfect ending because the older you get the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.

I'm kind of a good girl - and I'm not. I'm a good girl because I really believe in love integrity and respect. I'm a bad girl because I like to tease. I know that I have sex appeal in my deck of cards. But I like to get people thinking. That's what the stories in my music do.

I've come to recognize what I call my 'inside interests.' Telling stories. And helping people tell their stories is a sort of interpersonal gardening. My work at NBC News was to report the news but in hindsight I often tried to look for some insight to share that might spark a moment of recognition in a viewer.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

So what I do now is to pre-empt that by making the up into a virtue and telling funny stories about how crap I am before people have a chance to notice it for themselves and think maybe I haven't realised.

Sometimes people get mad at The Simpsons' subversive story telling but there's another message in there which is a celebration of making wild funny stories.