Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.

My first car I got it in an auction at my temple. It was an '86 Volvo that I got for 500 bucks and then wound up throwing $10 000 into the stereo system and put TVs in the foot rests. It was the most ridiculous Volvo you'd ever seen but I had never had money before and I was out of my mind.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines because I always had a car thing.

When you first get money you buy all these things so no one thinks you're mean and you spread it around. You get a chauffeur and you find yourself thrown around the back of this car and you think I was happier when I had my own little car! I could drive myself!

(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car.

My boyfriend keeps telling me I've got to own things. So first I bought this car. And then he told me I oughta get a house. 'Why a house?' 'Well you gotta have a place to park the car.'

My revenue was $4 million my first year in business off of one $20 item.

I've never chased fame. I came into this business to be a theatre actress. I was nine when I first appeared on stage. But I can't say I would turn my back on fortune. I'm someone who enjoys the benefits of money.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

The most important decision I've made in business? The choices of people I have around me. When I first started I brought everybody with me my homies from the neighborhood criminals. I just said 'Come on everybody we made it.' Then I had to realize we didn't make it. I made it.