All my friends are female, I've edited for a magazine for young girls for 15 years, I relate to women, and I'm very, very close to my younger sister.

My goal is to write books that are quality books with very real characters and a gripping plot.

I grew up in a two-bedroom house with my grandfather, my mom and dad and four kids. I slept on the couch or on the floor, and I always wanted to have my own space.

A lot of people are afraid of dolls - everybody remembers 'Chucky.'

Stand-up comedy is a raunchy profession.

I think that laughter and death are closely related: comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death. It's probably linked with the fact that we are the only animals who know we must die.

Rome has New York's formlessness, aimlessness, a kind of hard-boiled sophistication, blase about everything. In their filmmaking, too, the Italians have this tongue-in-cheek sense of comedy.

We didn't have electricity when I was a kid. We had to watch TV by candlelight. No, that's a silly joke.