Lynn Johnston

I've had some tremendous adventures, good and bad. It's part of the novel, and a novel isn't interesting if it doesn't have some good and bad. And you don't know what good is if bad hasn't been a part of your life.

Only a couple of times have I ever been to church and felt enlightened by it.

Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.

After I got this job at the syndicate, I started sending them money so they could go on trips and do the things they could never afford to do. All the while, I never knew that my mother was socking money away.

But I married a guy who treated me very badly, but I was happy. I was miserable, so I was happy.

If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper.

I was just so lucky to have a wonderful life after a tough marriage.

I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

When Kate was born, she was born into a world of joy and happiness and confidence. The difference between the children is night and day. She's happy, she's thriving, she's full of self-confidence. I tell her she's beautiful every day before I send her off to school.

But even though all this was going on at home, if someone had tried to take me away and put me in a children's home, I couldn't have handled it. Even though my mother was very brutal, it was my home.

Yes, and when I had Aaron, he left me, and I didn't know how to raise a child. And I wasn't close to my parents, and because I was too proud to go to my parents for help, I mistreated that little baby. I didn't want a baby.

You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian.