Zitat des Tages von Cherie Blair:
I am not Superwoman. The reality of my daily life is that I'm juggling a lot of balls in the air trying to be a good wife and mother, trying to be the prime-ministerial consort at home and abroad, barrister and charity worker, and sometimes one of the balls gets dropped.
Sometimes I have to pinch myself to think: have I really come this far? Because it is quite different, where I find myself today, from where I started off, in the streets of Waterloo, in the suburbs of Liverpool - that's for sure.
Since I'm not a fashion model, there's a limit to how nice I can make myself. I don't regard myself as an ugly person, but I don't think of myself as someone who would choose to be a model. I'm somebody who might be, I'd like to think, a role model for people who want to become lawyers.
I think anyone doing an interview is to some extent on show. And therefore, we always want to put on our best face.
I really am not going to get involved in a discussion about the legal position of the Iraq war. I am not the person to do that because I am not sufficiently impartial as a lawyer about this, because it's a matter that is of interest to the person that I am closest to in the world.
Many of the big decisions over progression, promotion and future career trajectory are taken when people are in their late twenties and thirties, putting women at a huge disadvantage because this is the very time they are most likely to be having a break to have children.
The thing I want to see before I die is women achieving full equality in the world. I'm very passionate about injustice against women and there's too much of it in the world. In so many parts of the world, women are not regarded as worthy or equal to men. In parts of the world, women are bought and sold.
Here we are, worrying about whether we're thin enough or whether our bottom looks too big in this pair of trousers or even whether or not I should wear a hat - does it really matter in comparison to the important things that are going on in the world?
I think it is what you do with your wealth that is important. I don't believe in accumulating money for money's sake. It's one of the reasons I want to do more about helping women.
I don't want to give this impression that I grew up in Liverpool in a cardboard box in abject poverty, but that didn't mean there weren't anxieties in my childhood about money.
I feel very strongly about contraception even though I know people say that, as a good Catholic girl, I shouldn't. But I disagree because I think one of the keys to women's progression in the 20th century is being able to control their fertility.
You can't please people who don't really know you and, you know, I do think that one of the things I do want to do is please the people who matter to me and please the people that do know me.
We need to empower all women, both financially and socially, to give them the tools to support themselves and their families. We need to start seeing them as contributors to society, as assets, not as objects of pity or, even worse, objects of shame.
For many women, becoming a widow does not just mean the heartache of losing a husband, but often losing everything else as well.
I'm an incurable optimist, and I'm a great believer in never looking back. Life is too short, and new challenges are exciting.
If we're going to truly solve the problems of the world, we've got to share our information whenever we can and strategically include one another in or efforts.
Sometimes it's easier to attack the spouse than it is to attack the politician.
Like every mother, it's my children; that's the first thing that makes me really proud. For my own part, it would be when I became a Queen's Counsel in 1995. I was the 76th woman ever to become a Queen's Counsel, so it was still a pretty rare thing.
Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn't achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing.
I have no problem with saying I am a socialist or with saying I'm a feminist. That's how I was when I was 15, and you know, I haven't grown out of it and probably never will.
Someone with 4As at A-level from Eton may look good on paper and come across as very smooth, but push a bit more, and often you get the impression they have learned to pass exams rather than think for themselves.
I think I'm one of life's copers. And picking myself up and dusting myself off and starting all over again is one of my mottoes, actually.
In my youngest days, the nuns at my grammar school drummed into us that we were in this world to make it a better place - not just for ourselves, but for other people, too. So from the very beginning, I've been driven by this idea that we have to make a difference, and it's one of the reasons I went into law in the first place.
Our experience shows - and survey after survey reveals - institutions are run better, communities are healthier when women are involved in solving the challenges of our society. Equal representation does not just lead to good democracy: it is democracy.
Do I have any advice for someone new to No. 10? Never open the door in your nightie. And that everybody has to adjust to it in a way that's right for their family.
I've learned when to speak out. You do have to learn when to bide your time and when to speak out, and I don't always get it right.
I was so intent as a young lawyer on beating the men at their own game that I didn't take any real maternity leave with my three younger children. It is only looking back that I realise I wasn't beating the system but reinforcing it.
