I was terrified of growing up to become the anti-me, maturing into a woman whom I would not recognise and who wouldn't recognise her younger self.

In the big picture, few of our careers live up to the dreams we nursed when we were young. In fact, one underside of success is that it's nearly always penultimate, and so every accomplishment merely raises the bar.

When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall.

In Shaker Heights, Ohio, one of America's first planned communities, order and harmony are prized.

There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so.

I'm not a runner, and I always dreamed about just throwing on my sneakers and really knocking everyone's socks off with my joy of traversing the world by foot.

I didn't pursue happiness at all. I've never pursued it. I wasn't brought up to pursue it.

In my worst moments, I think the biggest effect of 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' was to kill the happiness of people who had previously skipped through life, unaware of all the atrocities lurking in the world around them.