You know how Oprah has her moment about bread? Mine's about boots. You could wear it to a meeting at work. You could wear it to a date.You could wear it to a wedding with a suit.

I was on Oprah's show recently talking about the people who impacted me the most. One was a teacher and one was my soccer coach. I didn't even go into my family, who had the most influence.

I didn't lose weight for my career or a relationship - I did it to be happy and, as Oprah says, to live my best life.

With my book 'How to Remodel a Man,' I was on Oprah, Fox News, the Early Show, and Good Morning America. Oprah was the best - an hour long segment. TV is so short; you answer a few questions, and then it's over. It feels like a hit-and-run with a camera.

I'm extremely blessed to have the extraordinary mother that I have, and I don't mean Diana Ross, I mean the mother. My mom paved a road that didn't exist, as did Oprah.

Oprah was not somebody who was telling us what to do, she wasn't really teaching us like so many people we see today. With Oprah, she was learning and we were learning with her. And I think that's really was the seed that was planted for all of us to just hang in there with her.

Oprah is so bright, and her intelligence is so piercing that I don't think anyone who spends a few minutes with her isn't struck by that.

I did this movie called 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,' and I was an extra, and it was a movie that Oprah was producing. She had walked by, and I was making all the other extras laugh, and she said, 'You're a very funny young lady.' I was like, 'Eeeee!'

I got the famous Oprah hug!

Oprah was famous for going to a garden party and ad-libbing. She could literally interview people for a half hour about nothing, and it was entertaining. She had her own show before she had her own show.

I was in Nepal and I had watched Oprah Winfrey's show. I had no idea, as a kid in Nepal, who she was, but I remember watching an episode of hers about living your dreams.

Being on Oprah? You realize that there are a couple of types of audience members. There are like the cult people in the audience who are just crying before she gets on. And then there are the people who are playing it cool. I definitely was somewhere in the middle.

Oprah Winfrey is a big role model for me from a business capacity and a creative capacity. She is an incredible interviewer who cultivated a certain style by inserting her own personhood into a show on national television at a time when no one was talking about empowerment, spirituality, or our inner lives.

I wasn't ready for fame and all that brings to your life. It was an amazing experience, but so overwhelming, because no one can tell you beforehand when it will happen or how it will impact you. So no one can tell you how to handle it, being stopped everywhere you go because people saw you on 'Oprah.' It took me over, and I wasn't ready.

In honor of Oprah Winfrey: Even greater than the ability to inspire others with hope is the power to motivate them to give as much to the lives of others as they would give to their own; and to empower them to confront the worst in themselves in order to discover and claim the best in themselves.

You did the best you could, the best you knew how at the time." It was something like that. From Oprah on an Oprah show. Then I believe my quote above was from Maya Angelou on the Oprah show, not Oprah herself. I had heard it before but it was on Oprah's show again 1-7-09 and she said Maya had said it.

The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I'll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction-until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define "literature". The Latin root simply means "letters". Those letters are either delivered-they connect with an audience-or they don't. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that's because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books-and thus what they count as literature-really tells you more about them than it does about the book.

By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your fucking life.

I was on Oprah's show recently talking about the people who impacted me the most. One was a teacher and one was my soccer coach. I didn't even go into my family who had the most influence.

I think the success of a talk show depends on how true it is to the personality of the person hosting it. The shows I really admire like 'Oprah' and 'Ellen ' are distinctively like their hosts so I think my show will be successful only if we try to stay consistent to my own sense of myself.

I'm extremely blessed to have the extraordinary mother that I have and I don't mean Diana Ross I mean the mother. My mom paved a road that didn't exist as did Oprah.

Oprah was not somebody who was telling us what to do she wasn't really teaching us like so many people we see today. With Oprah she was learning and we were learning with her. And I think that's really was the seed that was planted for all of us to just hang in there with her.

Oprah is so bright and her intelligence is so piercing that I don't think anyone who spends a few minutes with her isn't struck by that.

I got the famous Oprah hug!