"Getting ahead in a difficult profession -- singing, acting, writing, whatever -- requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve."

Sophia Loren (b. 1934) Italian film actress, "Two Women", "A very Special Day"

Quite a few of the people I come into contact with regularly, both in my private and professional life, are carrying an awful lot of baggage. Not the physical type, but the type that is stuffed full of the echoes of the comments they have heard since birth, bursting at the seams with the behaviors they have witnessed, jam-packed with the talk that exists in their own heads and more. In fact, to a certain extent, we all have some of that type of baggage. It is how we deal with it that makes the difference. I