I'd been a housewife and mother to our son Thomas Jefferson, and I was looking for a new career. So when my agent called and said a producer named Paul Elliott from E&B productions, the biggest panto company in the country at the time, wanted to meet me I agreed.

I've been doing Pilates since 1974, I lift weights, I power walk every day and I run backwards. That's sometimes a little hard when you're not on your home turf, because you've got to find a place where there are no bumps in the way - or people.

I believe you need scientific proof that something works before you entrust your health to it.

Back then I was called Dumbo because of my ears. I was called Fatty, too. It was hurtful so I became like the class clown. I became the one who was kicked around.

I've always thought that, as a romance writer, I had the best job in the world. I sit around all day making up emotion-drenched, conflict-laden stories that push my heroes and heroines to the edge of sanity. Then I give them a happy ending.

In love, somehow, a man's heart is always either exceeding the speed limit, or getting parked in the wrong place.

The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience.

First, I was opposed to gay marriage because it seemed like one more way that gays were wanting to assimilate. When I realized the Christian right was so opposed to it, as well as tyrannical governments in Africa and Russia, I thought, 'It must be a good thing to fight for.'