In these confused times the role of classical music is at the very core of the struggle to reassert cultural and ethical values that have always characterized our country and for which we have traditionally been honored and respected outside our shores.

The Christian community latched onto a lot of my music because there were a lot of things about my struggle they related to. But I didn't really want to come out and be identified as a Christian because I didn't want to be a hypocrite because my life wasn't right.

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems seeing a painting listening to some music some opera which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

Movies were a struggle for me - they didn't come easy.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene and I loved creating those but I never really had great stories to string them together.

There are days when I struggle with wanting to be a full-time stay-at-home mom and feeling guilty about that because I work.

What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman a peasant woman struggled all her life worked in the garment center.

Quite frankly Barack Obama knows what it's like to pay a mortgage and student loans. He knows what it's like to watch a beloved family member in a medical crisis and worry that treatment is out of reach. Barack Obama knows our struggles. And my friends he shares our values.

The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain being abandoned having people not love me.

Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary it means accepting it as it comes with all the handicaps of heredity of suffering of psychological complexes and injustices.