I think we'll still be a family restaurant, we'll be contemporary, we'll be lifestyle, we won't be old, we won't be 60 years old in the view of the consumer.

Playtime and toys are good for kids, or they wouldn't buy them. McDonald's can provide that experience. And having dinner with the family is good for kids.

You then get into a period a few years ago, where a lot of external factors that we didn't have anything to do with did hit, and some of them at the same time... devaluations, weak economies, you name it, in various parts of the world.

So Europe's a big driver. And at one point, if the euro hadn't devalued, they would have been making as much money as the US with half the stores. Returns were higher.

McDonald's is almost 50 years old. For 47 years we had a pretty consistent track record of being able to deliver admirable sales.

You have got to have discipline and focus - on the customer and how you run the business.

I think this year we'll open up 900 gross, we're closing some, so the net count is lower, but the 900 are spread all over the place. Some of the closures are relocations, where you're moving it to another place in the marketplace.

When you're doing that you lose your focus on the discipline of the business, and how you train people at Hamburger University, and everybody gets on a bigger, different vision, and they're not on the same page.

I think we have a great track record on being relevant, on identifying consumer trends, needs and wants.

As I said, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about partner brands.

And so if your competitors aren't growing, if there isn't a competitive reason to grow, and you want focus and discipline to add customers to existing stores, you adjust your strategy.

But I tell you, I would really be interested if there was a partner we could take in, that could put them over here on the side, that would allow us full leverage and access down the road.

We cover hamburgers, chicken, veggie burgers, salads, we've got a pretty broad range. To me, McDonald's isn't only about the food. It's about the prices, it's about the way we eat.

Salads was a big indicator of that - there was a huge market out there for it. And why not tap it? Some of the things we are doing now around the globe are responding to customers. It's not because some guy sued you.

Every year we close 300-400 stores anyway, just relocations.

When you raise prices, you've got to make sure you get it to the bottom line. You can fritter it away because of the way you're running the business, with maybe not a totally disciplined approach.

I think we'll still be a family restaurant, we'll be contemporary, we'll be lifestyle, we won't be old, we won't be 60 years old in the view of the consumer.

But we had a pretty diversified portfolio of businesses around the world and things tended to offset each other. But one or two years ago, we had a lot of things happening at the same time.

The fact of the matter is, most of our orders are not supersized. Less than five per cent are supersized - that's never mentioned. The whole issue has been supersized itself.

And ours is a business that requires discipline and focus.

Ronald has had bicycle safety and safety in the home. Yes, Ronald is McDonald's, second most recognised figure after Santa Claus, and there's an element of obviously benefiting your business.

We have very specific rules about how we go to market with children, and I think they are very responsible.

The markets where we've got real good presence are the older, more mature markets like Australia, and Western Europe - where we've only got 6,000 stores, compared to the US with 13,000.

Some of the analysts were saying, Now you're a cash cow, there's no growth at all, pay it all out in dividends, give me it all, you can't invest wisely.

But, on balance, we seized the marketplace. We've got a great infrastructure. And yes it's struggling in some areas because of some external factors and some internal factors.

I talked about 12 to 18 months, and that's about reaffirming our foundation for sustained growth: getting the discipline back, getting the basics right, getting the customer focus back... so by the end of next year, I hope most of that's in place.

But you know the second month I was here I put out a healthy lifestyles directive. The pundits will say it was because we were sued. Well that's what they say. It was never about that.

But in terms of the code by which we go to market - it's not telling kids to supersize, we're not selling them, generally, products, in the advertising we do to them.

Because we only feed in the United States less than 1 per cent of the meals, most of them are eaten elsewhere. Most meals are eaten at home. So to make McDonald's the target is not going to solve the problem.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.

I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards.

You know raising a family in the lifestyle of a professional athlete can be very difficult.

I love to see my family together. That's what life is about. It's about family.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Even though we were all celebrities to a certain extent, we all looked at each other as family.

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

I love my family.

I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life... though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.