Idina Menzel Quotes

I usually doze off between 7:30 and 9 p.m. while putting my baby to sleep. Then I suddenly wake up remembering I'm an adult with no bedtime. I spend the next four hours catching up on reading, e-mails, and other adult pursuits until I collapse for good until sunrise.

If I manage to get seven hours' sleep, I'm a pretty good parent.

Ever since having kids, napping is something that I'm prone to do and very easily could do but rarely get the chance to.

Becoming a parent changed my life drastically and left me little time for leisure reading.

In the last year of my presidency, I travelled 200 days out of 365. You have to lead a very disciplined life. To be able to do that, I need a lot of sleep. But I have no problems sleeping. On long days, I can easily take a nap for 20 minutes in the afternoon.

I try to balance it out on the whole. Being a mum is always the priority. Next, it's taking care of yourself. Right now, I get to only work two days a week - it's a dream. I can't imagine how hard it is for mothers who work 40 hours a week.

Don't buy into the 20-hours-a-day entrepreneur myth. You need to sleep 8 hours a day to have a focused mind.

With a new baby, you have a bad day now and again because you're particularly tired, but most of the time, you're fine. You spend a lot of your time trying to figure out how you can get more sleep, but really, you're better off just giving up and admitting that you're not going to, so forget about it.

I used to take 40 minutes to warm up before going on stage. If you want to spend time with your child as well as having a career, you have to get up there even if your head's a mess. It's made me more relaxed, and I'm having some of my best shows.

With learning lines, before I had Alfie, I'd put it off and think, 'Oh, I'll just have a glass of wine and then do it later,' but when you've finally got a child to bed and you know you've only got an hour, then you achieve so much.

I'm a mother with two small children, so I don't take as much crap as I used to.

I work, and then whenever I have any other time, I'm with my daughter, and then I go to sleep. I think you basically have to abandon the dreams of having any other adult activities in your life. You have to go to sleep whenever your child goes to sleep. That's basically how we're doing it.

From offstage until the moment I walk onstage, I constantly tweak my talk show and 'Top Model', but at the same time, I often leave my private life by the wayside.

Well, I took a sabbatical. I walked away from shooting movies because I couldn't handle the travel. I'm a single parent. I had young kids, and I found that keeping in touch with them from hotel rooms and airports wasn't working for me. So I stopped.

You know, when I am working, I take really, really good care of myself. I eat really well, and I exercise, and again, I have this team of people pulling me together every day.

Modern women - we're very good at keeping ourselves busy. There are PTA meetings, exercising, bake sales at school. I like that my life is not the same every day.

I get restless easily so I always want to keep working, but I am trying to pace it as well.

I always feel like I want more time with my kids. But I reject the notion that you can't have it all. I think you can: just not necessarily in abundance.

As a teenager you've got a lot of stuff going on all the time. It's hard to find a couple extra hours of sleep.

I think that is one thing I've picked up: follow a routine, be consistent, and everything is going to fall in place. If you are scrambling around, and you are late for stuff, that adds extra stress, and you have to go out there and hit a 97 mph fastball.

It's tough to find time to get rest.

I used to work until two in the morning every night, then still get up at six. Now, I have to help my daughter with her homework, spend time with my wife.

I don't drink or party. There's literally no time for that. As soon as I finish a show, I go straight back to the hotel room, do emails, I sleep, that's it.

The most difficult thing about my job is that I do a lot of 19-hour days. It's really difficult to have a life, never mind a relationship. I don't have any regrets, really. I'm quite content. I'm very stubborn and persistent. I just keep working.

It's hard for anybody who works a lot and has children. But I wouldn't trade it for anything.