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My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person.

I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'

The person who inspired me the most was a friend of mine, Anita Roddick. I know that Anita wasn't known to be an ardent feminist, but she truly was.

There are certain things I couldn't write because they're not intrinsic to my beliefs. For instance, I couldn't write a hero or heroine who didn't put children first.

The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

I try to sort of make myself emotional in the moment when I'm writing, and that always translates better. When I'm writing, I can't do abstract.

Well, I just wanted to be a person. I just wanted them to keep writing me as humanistic as possible.