I retire with a smile on my face in good health and ready to spend autumns at my kids' games instead of my own. I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life.

When I turned 30 due to my father's heart history and my family genetics I vowed to start seeing a cardiologist every year and just really be proactive and take my own heart health into my own hands.

I am actually in poor health due to chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome and my ability to work is greatly diminished right now so I have to get better before I can start another big project.

When you get older your health becomes important to you things start breaking down you've always got a different ache or pain.

When you start fooling around with drugs you're hurting your creativity you're hurting your health. Drugs are death in one form or another. If they don't kill you they kill your soul. And if your soul's dead you've got nothing to offer anyway.

Many smart folks seem to think that if you just get your metaphors and messages right you'll win. That if you start describing what you favor as a 'moral value' - 'affordable health care is a moral value' etc. - then you'll appeal to red-state voters.

I'm 58 years old and I just went through 8 back surgeries. They started cutting on me in February 2009 and I was basically bed ridden for almost two years. I got a real dose of reality that if you don't have your health you don't have anything.

When I was on Broadway I got really sick with walking pneumonia. I decided not to take my health for granted anymore and make it a priority. The great thing is the pounds just started to fall off.

It's long past time we started focusing on the solutions that actually keep women healthy instead of using basic aspects of women's health as a tool of cultural moral and political control.

A healthy outside starts from the inside.