Whether you're a man or a woman - whatever your gender - if you're doing a job, and you're doing it well, you should be paid accordingly.

You can be aware and educated and informed, but you've got to place emphasis on being compassionate, having empathy and understanding.

You have to keep time aside for life, which I haven't done enough over the past couple years.

It's hard being homeless at any age, but at 16 years old? I can't even imagine. When you're a homeless teen, how do you build a future or have any sort of life?

Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice.

There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn't good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.

There's this song called 'Brad Chester,' which is like the depths of my family. It comes from a very personal place.

When I was six, someone in my family gave me a yellow pencil holder that had my name printed on it. I still have it, and when I'm doing table work in rehearsal, I use it to carry my highlighters and other writing utensils. I love it.