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The story of my very first sale is the fact that I dreamed up a foolproof paper to cheat an insurance company out of several hundred thousand dollars.

I had an agent who spent eight years - eight years! - trying to sell my stories. She sold other people's work; she just didn't sell mine.

She said 'I'm by commission. You don't have to pay anything until you sell anything.' I said, 'Well fine. You want to be my agent and not make anything.' I thought, 'Boy, is she dumb.'

I got into real estate very much by accident.

When I was a postdoc, I jotted every fresh thought on a three-by-five card and kept them in a card catalogue.

I was an estate agent for three years. That was pretty grim.

I wanted to be a businesswoman from as early as I can remember, and specifically, my real passion was real estate.

I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money, to finance this earnest work, and then I chucked it out.

I have always been business minded, always been sorta an entrepreneurial guy; I played a character on 'Felicity' that was modeled after me, actually.