My father who was from a wealthy family and highly educated a lawyer Yale and Columbia walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother a seventh grade graduate who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.

The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big black shadow.

I was with a famous comedian when a young fan walked up and asked for an autograph. The comedian blew him off. I'll never forget the look on the young boy's face. He was devastated.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start but where you're going. That's family values.

I walked along that slippery slope where if you fail through lack of faith you sell your soul to the devil.

And I went to New York and died for 10 years I walked those pavements. I can't think of New York without feeling uncomfortable and feeling like a failure.

If what you do is being threatened as a profession that could be scary. But that's the same reason why I walked out on stage many times after receiving death threats. I couldn't live without doing what I wanted to do. So at the same time I have to be willing to die for it.

If a cow walked into this room I'd probably walk out. I could milk it but my dad never forced me to do a lot of chores like that mostly because he loved doing it himself.

When I was a kid I wanted to walk with my dad's limp - my dad was my hero - but that infuriated him and he would make me walk back and forth in the living room until I walked without it.

The only day I remember of my parents' marriage was the day my dad walked out. As I stood there at five years old with my older sister and younger brother I knew that he was gone.