“I guess now that I think back, I used to play priest and be a funny priest. I don’t know, I grew up in such a Catholic family that I kind of liked to test the boundaries a little bit and I think I had fun watching my mom laugh.”

I’m the comedic girl next door and a lot of fun.

The University of Google is where I got my degree from.

People don’t see this side of me. They don’t know I read, like, 800 million spiritual books. Lately I am just really getting into a lot of spirituality.

You totally value and respect your body as you get older.

I didn’t have to work out before 35 but now I have to.

I’m so scared girls look at my breast implants and think, ‘To get boys, you need big boobs.’ I tell them, ‘Don’t get it done. Those fears go away. You develop other insecurities, but breasts aren’t one of them.’ I want to get them half-size.

I tried a few times, unsuccessfully, to lose weight. It wasn’t until I joined Weight Watchers that I was finally able to do it. I went to meetings and my son came with me. The best thing was that I could eat what I wanted and still lose weight. Slow and steady, I was getting my pre-pregnancy body back.

A talk show is difficult because the formula is always the same: there’s a host and there’s guests. Really what you can change is only so much. So, I don’t have any pre-interviews, which forces real conversation.

Those outside of autism need to understand this is an epidemic and we need more government funding, insurance coverage and education reform.

Craziest thing I’ve done for love is getting married. I think it’s crazy. I think it’s crazy, crazy, crazy. I’m never going to say I wouldn’t do it again but I have to make sure it’s love and not settling for the ‘I have to do this by a certain age,’ which is kind of what I did.

For a seriously autistic kid, the best prognosis might be getting into a mainstream school without being too much of a shadow. For a moderately autistic kid the best prognosis is full recovery.

I look at autism like a bus accident, and you don’t become cured from a bus accident, but you can recover.

Google is one of the most incredible breakthroughs that we have today. Yes, it can scare a lot of patients, thinking we’re all dying because we look up something on Google. But there’s also a lot of anecdotal information from parents, firsthand accounts of what they did for their own child.

All those girls who were mean to me[in high school], I pay them back by going through the drive-through window and asking for my burger. That feels really great.

It’s absolutely imperative for the parents and the typical kids to have time by themselves, to go out to dinner or even go on vacation while someone else cares for the autistic child.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many casting couches I was attacked on. Not just by casting people, but by stars.

And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

I was dating a transvestite, and my mother said, “Marry him, you’ll double your wardrobe.”

To me, full-time mothering felt like way too much and yet not nearly enough. Lost in a landslide of diapers, birthday parties, and others’ needs, I ached to reestablish myself.

Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it’s still snowing.

I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, ‘Get the hell off my property.’

I was asked for years about being a Republican, probably because most black people are Democrats. My mother heard it once and called me and said ‘Charles, Republicans are for the rich people.’ And I said, ‘Mom, I’m rich.’

My daughter and I are very close, we speak every single day and I call her every day and I say the same thing, “pick up, I know you’re there.”

My mother once said “If you don’t pay attention to age, then it won’t pay attention to you.” And she says it, and it sounds nice, but I don’t buy it.