At my age, I do not think anyone is untouched by cancer.

We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.

My habit would have been to veer towards the dark - to prove I was something edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognisant of the dark side. Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that is true, but I am cognisant of the fact that people can do things well. And can be more loving than you expect.

It is not possible to live in this age if you do not have a sense of many contradictory forces.

I am very accepting with my age. It is like notches on your belt: experience, wisdom, and a different kind of beauty. There comes a day when you've become comfortable in your skin.

You need some insecurity if you are an actor. It keeps the pot boiling. I have not yet started to think about retiring. I was shocked when I heard about Paul Newman retiring at age 82. Most actors just fade away like old soldiers.

It is hard for women at my age in Hollywood, but I am not discouraged.

We are still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. That is the old metaphor: You are born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude.

We can no longer waste time and money. Every day, more than 2,000 girls in America, age 15-19, give birth - in the wealthiest, most educated nation in the world! Neither you nor I should accept this statistic.

The reality is sobering: in the United States one in three girls will become pregnant before age 20, totaling more than 750,000 girls per year.

I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way, it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas.

I definitely do not look my age. So I actively look for roles that will help people change their perception of me.

The age thing really bugs me. Do people have more of a right to not like what I say because I am 19?

There are a lot of downsides to being male. We age faster and die younger. But give us this: we are lifetime baby-making machines. Women is reproductive abilities start to wane when they are as young as 35. Men? We are good to go pretty much till we are dead.

Older fatherhood is not all bad: testosterone rates drop about 1% per year as men age, making them less reactive and more patient, and a professionally established middle-aged man is likely to have more time and money to devote to his kids than a twenty-something who's just getting started.

Credit or debit cards, for starters, are nothing short of shoppers Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money, we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic.

When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you are in the sweet spot for trouble.

It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see. I can only hope that is correct, because there is an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

In Hollywood, you play a mom, and the next thing you know, you are on The Golden Girls. They age you so fast.