When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.
When I found out I was pregnant, the first thing that had to go was the acne medicine and chemical-filled face washes and lotions. I made sure everything was natural and organic, and I started reading blogs by other pregnant women.
I'm just a sensitive little soul who's put so much into her career that I haven't had enough energy or time left over to sustain a relationship.
I live in a fantasy world where I think I'm immune to all disease. I don't get sick and haven't had anything major go wrong.
When I had my first child, I didn't write for a year, and I felt when I tried to start again I might actually not be able to do it anymore. I really could not do it well, and I felt out of sorts with it.
Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?
If I had been a good student and an achiever, I might have been excited by a more systematic approach to writing than what I do.
I've been in love with people and ideas in several cities and learned that the lovers I've loved and the ideas I've embraced depended on where I was, how cold it was, and what I had to do to be able to stand it.
I tend to write about more than one generation because as a child I had contact with more than one generation; it was normal to be around older people.
My parents had a difficult divorce. My dad had to take a backseat for a few years, and my grandfather came in. He was also my inspiration for becoming an actor. I really respected him.
When my little son, Prince, had health issues as a baby, we were told that he had a 20 percent chance of survival.
The economic analysis of law has had many good ideas. It's had one great idea -like, world-transforming idea, I think. And the idea is, when you're stuck, minimize the sum of the costs of decisions and the costs of errors.
You know, oil prices from 2007, on the strength of a very robust global economy and a very robust emerging China, many of you will recall, ramped up to near $150 a barrel. Then we had the financial - U.S. financial collapse. Oil prices collapsed all the way down to $40 a barrel.
The good news was that Enterprise and the newly arrived Yorktown had attacked the Marshall and Gilbert islands. Those attacks had a great effect on morale.
Before I was through my teens, I had been introduced and exposed to artists who would, in later years, become legendary.
I was a kid at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, so a lot of things changed. You had pop music coming up, with David Bowie, you had new television programmes and all these things. I was fascinated.
I was determined if I was going to become a superstar it would be on my terms. I've had that ethic since the beginning.
Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.'
Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.
There were many times in my initial days as a writer when I had felt the need to talk to someone, to leverage on someone's experience, to learn from someone who had written and published a book.
The biggest privilege I've had in my life is being able to make a choice. If you make a choice, it can't be a wrong choice because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
When I was 16 the first girl I had a crush on wasn't interested at all. I liked her from afar for ages, and when I eventually got the courage and told her, and she wasn't into me.
I loved David Lean, he had a huge influence on me when I was going to film school.
Our friend, Timothy J. Russert, was a man who awoke every morning as if he had just won the lottery the day before. He was determined to take full advantage of his good fortune that he couldn't quite believe and share it with everyone around him.
I had been on this improv team at this really great improv theater. It's called iO now. It used to be called Improv Olympic. They have showcases for Lorne Michaels and other writers and people who work at 'SNL' usually about once a year, although I don't know if it always happens.
One Thanksgiving weekend, I had a lost weekend at a friend's place with 'Grand Theft Auto.'
Skeptical of strangers, lobstermen are keepers of secrets, working in the howling wind and hot sun, the icy snows, and bewildering fog. When I was growing up, the lore was that they had the right to shoot anyone who messed with their traps.
Not long ago, I got to meet some troopers whose lives had been saved. They came with their wives, their children, their parents. It was a very moving occasion.
'Animal House' was my first movie, so I didn't have anything to compare it to. I was a sight gag more than anything else. So I can't say it was one of those things where your life changes. When the movie came out, I had to ask for the night off at the bar.
I had a complicated life until I was 25. I was born in Bristol and was brought up by my mum and my stepfather in Edinburgh. He introduced me to books.
Religion, in any form, is always interesting to me because of how powerful it is. Not even the religion itself, but to the people that follow it... The effect that it has had on people's minds.
It's interesting, I had absolutely no maternal instinct. I'm much more interested in young people now.
I've always had fun with music, but I prefer to listen to it rather than sing.
My folks were very practical. They were also kind of able to think outside of the box. They were not going to let circumstance paralyze them. They knew sometimes you just had to take some new initiative. I think they passed that on to all of us... If you don't find a way, you make one.
My heart was broken when I realized my daughter had a problem. I pray every day for her.
But if you read Jane Austen, you know that she had a wicked sense of humor. Not only was she funny, but her early writing was very dark and had a gothic tone to it.
