African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength and to be liberated from fear and from silence.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time.

When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril.

Italian girls are famous for being snobby and expecting men to make the first move. In America if I don't make eye contact the guys won't come over and talk. American girls just go for it. You men are spoiled.

If it's not some daring dangerous affair it's just not interesting or so it seems. So here you have two people - a famous American iconic couple - who actually like each other sexually in marriage. Imagine.

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

These days with 'American Idol' and all the other reality shows young people become famous overnight and that can be very difficult to handle the way photographers follow you around and study your every move.

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics called Cheetah blades Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

Maya Angelou the famous African American poet historian and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV I didn't want to be famous I didn't want to be anyone in particular I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags or go out with cute guys from shows or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.

It's never been my purpose to become an American icon or more famous or richer.

The whole 'American Idol' way of looking at things is the antithesis of what I grew up with. There are a whole lot of kids wanting to be famous now whereas if I'd even mentioned that word to one of my teachers I would have got into a whole load of trouble.

While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs.

My family was all born in Sicily and I'm Italian-American. They're the real thing. They're authentic Italians and honestly they're the most open-minded nicest people in the world and nothing can really offend them. That's the way I think true Sicilians are.

The American people know what's necessary to get this economy moving again. It's fiscal discipline in Washington D.C. and across-the-board tax relief for working families small businesses and family farms.

What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.

Well one of the most important things for Americans to be reminded of is that a lot of the exceptional nature of our country is founded in Judeo-Christian values that promotes individualism personal responsibility a strong work ethic and a commitment to family charity.

'American Horror' is the debasement of the suburban family the way a lonely kid would have imagined it in the Seventies.

People had this image of the Jacksons as the perfect American family and I destroyed that image. But what people have to understand is writing that book was very healing for me.

Music was your real passion this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job - this thing that was highly visible this thing that became about commerce - that's when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.

I now have two different audiences. There's the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years and the American family audience. American jokes less fighting.

The real estate agent had to go door-to-door in the apartment building we wanted to rent asking if it was OK for this interracial family - my mom is white and I was a 1-year-old half-African kid - to live in the apartment building.

My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Tarzan' and in programs such as 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sheena Queen of the Jungle.'

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.