“After a number of years dating, we decided we were good partners.”

Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.

The biggest killers of children around the world are two things: diarrhea and pneumonia. When you think about it, in the United States, kids don’t die of diarrhea anymore, but it’s a huge problem in the developing world.

Now we just really need to do the work, which we’re doing, to get contraceptives out to women worldwide.

We [with Bill Gates] started to make decisions about what we’d invest in. Then I actually started traveling for the foundation. I’ve probably been to India now eight times at least and Africa numerous times.

Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That’s the place that governments often don’t want to, or can’t, work.

I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.

I think it’s very important that we instill in our kids that it has nothing to do with their name or their situation that they’re growing up in; it has to do with who they are as an individual.

Philanthropy is not about the money. It’s about using whatever resources you have at your fingertips and applying them to improving the world.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.

Women and girls face a whole host of issues. We start with health, so we work very deeply on maternal deaths, making sure that a mom doesn’t die in childbirth, making sure that she has access, for instance, to AIDS medication.

All women, everywhere, have the same hopes: we want to be self-sufficient and create better lives for ourselves and our loved ones.

I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.

Kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what’s wrong with the school system.

As a woman finds economic opportunity, even if she’s only earning a couple of dollars a day, if she can save it on her phone, she then makes different decisions for her household than her husband might.

You can’t save kids just with vaccines.

The biggest pieces of work that we do are vaccines, because those save lives, and also family planning. Because if a woman can space the births of her children, it changes everything for her health and her child’s health.

The worst thing a girl could do on a date is fart louder than me.

Don’t go out dating others just because you feel empty or because you want to feel alive. You do it for the right reason.

Age is just a number. Who cares how old the girl is that I date?

I basically went out with any guy who asked me because hardly anyone ever asked me out.

I had never really dated. I’ve always been a relationship kind of person.

I really liked one girl and asked her out 22 times, but she always said no. Finally I sang to her, and she said she’d go out with me.

I didn’t really [seriously] go out with any guys until I was 18 and met my ex-fiancé, Michael Weatherly.

I had a few dating disasters along the way with girls cheating on me. One girl was the inspiration for me singing ‘Cry Me A River’ on ‘The X Factor.’ That was my payback to her because she was unfaithful.