It was an honor and privilege to arrive to this country 16 years ago with almost no money in my pocket. A lot has happened since then.

My mom died of cancer when I was really young. I'm not someone who tries to work out their own stuff with a role but I think that happened despite my best efforts to keep myself separate from it.

You know I don't think any mother aims to be a single mom. I didn't wish for that but it happened.

When I was 5 some financial things happened and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say 'Don't get comfortable because we may not be here long.'

Men occasionally stumble over the truth but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

I look back to when I got divorced in the late 1970s. When that happened I was so broken up. After that I decided to seek God for my life and my next marriage.

My first marriage was totally unsuitable and shouldn't have happened. It was a whirlwind rebound thing. I was 23 or 24 - a baby.

Provincial governments in Canada have terminated the positions of marriage commissioners who have for personal religious convictions not performed same sex marriages. It has happened in Saskatchewan.

In terms of my marriage you know falling in love with my husband was by far the best thing that's ever happened to me.

I never thought of losing but now that it' s happened the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I decided very early on just to accept life unconditionally I never expected it to do anything special for me yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.

Things happened there that I don't think are the finest hours for anybody whether it was a journalist the legal system or in that case of the political system who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.

I wouldn't change anything. I think that it's important to let things happen and stay 'happened'. I think that's all part of the learning curve part of fate. I'm just glad that it happened.

In this business if you take too long the landscape changes. So the opportunities that were there when I decided to take a break weren't there when I came back. It's like 'Wait a second - what happened here?' It was a real learning experience. I've paid my dues I will tell you that.

We have now under President Obama's leadership had 29 months in a row of private sector job growth. That stretch of positive private sector job growth hasn't happened since 2005. We still have a long way to go but we are moving in the right direction.

What happened with Hurricane Katrina was the American electorate was forced to look at what lay behind the veneer of chest-beating. We all saw the consequences of having terrible government leadership.

It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin and I've spoken with athletes who for years afterward have been tormented by the knowledge that had they done something ever so slightly different they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.

The beautiful thing about my intelligence is that it doesn't really come in one specific department. So even if something hasn't happened to me I have information on how to get you through whatever you may be going through.

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

Heaven knows I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

Some stories are true that never happened.

The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies and that's where I found my material in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired you don't come home your best self.

Being from Africa is the best thing that could have ever ever happened to me. I cannot see it any other way. All of my fundamental principles that were instilled in me in my home from my childhood are still with me.

I maintain the rather old-fashioned view that this is my work and it's in the public arena but that doesn't entitle everyone to know what happened at home before coming here.