I'm like a teenage boy - I eat like one and know as much cooking as one. Neither do I bake, and I can always be counted on to bring the wine to a pot luck.

I have someone else clean my house so that it will actually get cleaned, and I let kids in my house survive on Peeps and 'SpongeBob.'

There's not much about me that readers don't know because I am equal parts open and boring. If there is one thing readers do know about me, it's that I am very un-domestic.

There are few places in my life that I've found more ruggedly beautiful than the Highlands of Scotland. The place is magical - it's so far north, so remote, that sometimes it feels like you've left this world and gone to another.

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

I admit there's an element of brutality in all my work - it's part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore - but the last thing I'm trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people's pain and humiliation.

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

I don't think your personal life has anything to do with your professional life. They are separate things. Whatever is happening at home shouldn't be carried to work. Everyone has his/her own journey. Some revel in the fact that they derive that from personal contentment, and others draw it from extreme sorrow.