I knew that I needed to do something that I desperately loved. There was a period where I did question if it was acting because I knew that I would be making things hard on myself. I knew that there was going to be a little bit of a hullabaloo because of my dad being who he is and all that.

My dad was a musician and I traveled around with him so it was something that I knew.

A large part of my life revolves around my dad. Sometimes I even feel a strong sense of connection something very tangible when I learn something new in the martial arts.

You know not having my real dad around and having a step dad made me want to be a great dad. So now I have been one for 9 years. And now 3 daughters. So that is what I am - a dad first and foremost before anything else. It's just something that comes natural now.

My dad's a scratch golfer and I've got the knack of seeing something and then replicating it. I saw my dad swing a club and I worked out how to do the same thing. My backswing and follow-through have been basically the same since I was two.

Both my mum and dad were great readers and we would go every Saturday morning to the library and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature and all of us would come with an armful of books.

I'm a military kid both parents in the military - Mom did 12 years Dad did 21 served in two wars. So discipline is something that was huge.

My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.

My grandfather had two boys my uncle had three boys my dad had me and my two brothers each of my brothers have had two boys. Then something happened with the chromosomal experiment and suddenly I've got three girls.

My dad used to draw these great cartoon figures. His dream was being a cartoonist but he never achieved it and it kind of broke my heart. I think part of my interest in art had to do with his yearning for something he could never have.

Now that I'm a dad I'm practicing what I call 'one- handed cooking ' because I've got something more important in my other arm. I'm whipping up lots of frittatas and omelets.

The one thing that kept our family together was the music. The only thing that our family would share emotionally was to have our dad cry over something the kids did with music.

In Heaven I believe my dad is somewhere doing something nice. I feel I've been too lucky to travel this far without somebody guiding me.

'I Know You Care' is about my dad. And I haven't seen him for a long long time. And my parents divorced when I was really young. And I guess I just wanted a - it was my way of saying that I wasn't bitter or angry anymore. I was just sad and just felt like something was missing.

My dad's whole family is in Madras and I was born in America so we didn't have that big Indian community. I don't really have anything interesting to say about it. When I talk about it people are like 'meh let's talk about something else.'

My father was something of a rainbow-chaser.

I inherited that calm from my father who was a farmer. You sow you wait for good or bad weather you harvest but working is something you always need to do.

If we can't have the courage to tell our constituents hey we've got to cut back then if we can point to something and say I would like to vote for more benefits for you but this balanced budget amendment or statutory spending cap or whatever the device is is preventing me from doing it.

There has to be this pioneer the individual who has the courage the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile especially when it is new and different.

But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.

The problem is when you are writing something in retrospective it needs a lot of courage not to change or you will forget a certain reality and you will just take in consideration your view today.

I think what I would say to my younger self and probably to younger just starting-out writers is that a lot of times you're just afraid to put yourself out there and it's uncomfortable because it's working up the courage to do something to push yourself to do those things.

Everybody even me sometimes had to compromise on something doing things we know to be wrong and this happens doing whatever job in the world. But a singer must have the courage of saying no.

The one thing I learned the most about acting is it takes a tremendous amount of courage to go there and stand still. It takes courage and guts to step out of your mind frame and depict something.