When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with ""lost"" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.

For instance, I have never believed that there is only one person for each person in the world. It doesn't make the least sense to me. However, in reality, I fell in love at 45 and I am absolutely certain that my now husband is the only man in the world for me, a truth I find both ridiculous and uplifting.

One of the great tragedies I see is people not putting every effort into the foundation of their marriage. My grandmother told me that it's one man and one woman for life and that your marriage is worth fighting for.

Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.

You're not going to hear me sing about being on a tractor or being married... because I don't know anything about that.

Anything that has a relationship with pleasure, we reject it. Eating, they talk about cholesterol; making love, they talk about AIDS; you talk about smoking, they talk about cancer. It's a very sick society that rejects pleasure.