Quote

I run a charity. If my name pops up in your call ID, chances are I'm about to ask you for something - money, free ad space, your first born. So it is probably no surprise that people often don't take my calls.

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

I'm going to be in another city when my kids are teenagers. I'll be like, 'Give me a call when you're done with all that.'

I remember if the telephone rang after 9 o'clock in the house, my mother would say, 'Who's ringing at this time?' We just wouldn't answer the phone.

Only two things change when you get older: the energy in your voice and the time of night you feel it's appropriate to call someone. In your 20s, people call at 2 a.m. and yell, 'Are you up?' into the answering machine. Now, someone calls after 8 p.m., and my boyfriend is like, 'Who is that? Who could be calling at this hour?'

People from New York have been calling, to see if I'm still alive. When I answer the phone, you can hear the disappointment in their voice.

I start phone calls at 4 A.M. to cheer people up. The housebound, people in the hospital. People who, after decades, still can't get over what happened 10 or 15 years ago.

As a novelist, there are three phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime because if you waited for them you would grow despairing - one calling from Stockholm with a Swedish accent, one from the NBA, and one from Oprah Winfrey.

I have a feeling when I'm 80 years old I'm going to get a phone call: There's going to be another Rocky.

For years, people have re-dialed when the line was busy. They waited their turn. When I'm put on hold, I always hope that as my revenge, their other call will be someone wanting to sell them something.