I know this is going to sound corny but I love my life. I love my baby so I love getting to wake up with him. And I have the most amazing job with writing that any actor would love and costars who I can't wait to see on Monday mornings. And I love coming home to my husband.

I run from Horatio Street down just past Battery Park City and back. It's amazing to run and see the Statue of Liberty and the ferries coming in. People think if you're not near Central Park there's nowhere to go but there's a whole ecosystem happening down here.

Becoming food savvy is one thing but it's amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won't even eat.

I kicked the door open and I'm gonna hold my leg in there. I'm keeping the door open for all these amazing female singer-songwriters that are coming out.

Oh my God this amazing cool breeze is coming through my window and the sun is shining. I'm happy.

It was amazing to me that all of a sudden I was hearing my music on the radio and coming out of cars.

The thing that is really hard and really amazing is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

I think that in itself is kind of an amazing achievement to be able to say that your full-time career is in any creative arts let alone a show that has kept people interested for coming on four seasons and hopefully more.

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt you're really on your own. You're alone and there's no one to help you.

As a child I had to get up early for school or work. I'd get ready by myself. I'd set my alarm to wake me up very early in the morning and be off to work the family driver driving me every morning. I did it alone my parents never coming in to wake me up.

And if you don't believe the sun will rise stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.

I've always had a huge fear of dying or becoming ill. The thing I'm most afraid of though is being alone which I think a lot of performers fear. It's why we seek the limelight - so we're not alone were adored. We're loved so people want to be around us. The fear of being alone drives my life.

Life's an awfully lonesome affair. You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.

I'm a teenager but I'm independent - I have my own apartment I have my own life. And I think I have learned more than any of those teenagers have in school. I learned to be responsible leaving my family and coming here alone.

You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.

Everyone takes pause at 40. It's the age you have to assess everything in your life. It's the fictitious marker that's always coming up when you're young. The world really does look at you to kind of have it together by 40 and be successful by 40. Whatever success means.

I think that clearly it has an influence to be coming of age during the punk rock era to come from a difficult and sporadically violent background to have been in and out of such chaos I think it actually helps. But I don't know for sure.

We incorporated new tastes and flavors into our kids' diets from a very early age which helped to develop their palates and prevented them from becoming picky eaters. We don't buy junk food and give them options of fresh fruit yogurt raw almonds or dried whole grain cereals for snack time.

You hit a certain age and - especially because of TV - the young cooks coming up say 'You're a sellout because you're doing something other than what you should be doing.' 'Top Chef' is a double-edged sword for me: There's a whole group of people who will not come to the restaurants because they assume I'm not in them anymore all I do is TV.

There's also some element of coming of age during the Reagan administration which everybody has painted as some glorious time in America but I remember as being a very very dark time. There was apocalypse in the air the punk rock movement made sense.

I've been screaming at the top of my lungs at my family 'Work out! Work out! Old age is coming!'

When you get to a certain age there is no coming back.

I'd like to talk about free markets. Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving. And that's basically becoming limited.

I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.