Christmas is more stressful with present buying an...

Sometimes I feel like I'm not only the engine but the caboose. I have to be in the front car and pull forward, and at the same time run around behind and push everybody along with me.

I'm an activist for gay marriage equality and children's rights. I'm the face of Share Our Strength.

Nobody makes bouillabaisse from scratch. It's all a bunch of malarkey. Even the restaurants buy a commercial-grade product. I had a very famous chef tell me that.

I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

We incorporated new tastes and flavors into our kids' diets from a very early age, which helped to develop their palates and prevented them from becoming picky eaters. We don't buy junk food and give them options of fresh fruit, yogurt, raw almonds, or dried whole grain cereals for snack time.

I've always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food.

With the song 'This Christmas' I wanted to do something that was kind of different. I mean, Donny Hathaway is an amazing artist. So I wanted to bring my flavor to the song so when people over the age of 45 or 50 hear it they'll be like 'OK, he did his thing with that record.' It's like I can appeal to everybody and not just a younger demographic.

My mother was a professional sick person she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It's just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she's the daughter of alcoholics who'd leave her alone at Christmas time.

'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong.

Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It's called Four Blind Mice and it's a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military.

I am so excited this year getting to play the 85th Anniversary Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everyone knows on Thanksgiving morning to get up, turn on the TV and watch the parade, so to be an actual participant is going to be fun and I'm looking forward to it. I am gonna have to put on my deer hunting gear, though, to stay warm!

There is no racial or ethnic involvement in Thanksgiving, and people who may be very distant from the Christian system can see the beauty and the positive spirit that comes from the holiday.

Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song.