When I was growing up in the 1950s, sweaters were a huge thing.

The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.

I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

I started modelling at the age of 16 and always aspired to be an actor. But my family only agreed to it on the condition that I would not let my studies suffer because of my work.

I'm really proud of 'Private Life.' It's about a marriage and a couple on the hunt to make a family by any means necessary. They're on such an obsessive quest that, after awhile, you forget that it's even for a baby. It fits right in that middle pocket of being a comedy and a drama.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

I guess, over time, I had convinced myself that I could imagine what it would be like to lose a son or daughter. You try to imagine it so that you can write the right kind of letters or form the right words to try to comfort. But you can't even come close. It is unimaginable.