I didn't know that I could do a talk show. I didn't know that we could bring variety to daytime. I didn't know that people wanted to see singing and dancing and comedy in the morning.

If I can bring joy into the world if I can get people to stop thinking about their pain for a moment or the fact the tomorrow morning they're going to get up and tell their boss off... then I'll be successful.

There would be nights when I would wake up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I would go downstairs and write. The staff had a pool going on how many pages of typing I would bring in here in the morning.

What is news? It's hard to quantify. Certainly news has changed completely and the morning shows are not really designed to bring you the news except to tell you what happened overnight and the rest of it is a kind of magazine mentality - a little bit of this a little bit of that. It's harder to be an educated and informed citizen.

'Good Morning America' exploited Joan Lunden's pregnancy but you won't see me bringing my babies on the air. The only reason I'm talking about the babies at all is that they've been with me on the show since I became pregnant. After a while I had to acknowledge this pumpkin tummy.

And we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders in terms of raising money - I hate to bring this up - are pushing hot buttons.

You need to do the work to bring the money in but not compromise standards.

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams but that's another story.

If you really believe that you're making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools bring down crime build affordable housing clean the streets - not to have a fair fight.

I became alienated from this religious upbringing and started making music. I wanted to be a big star. All those things I saw in the films and on the media took hold of me and perhaps I thought this was my god: the goal of making money.