The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field which at that point was being an actress.

We had the best food any battlefield ever had.

America is becoming more and more dependent upon imports from foreign manufacturers than we are exports from our country in all fields: in appliances in clothing even food. This year America may become for the first time in its history a net food importer.

My bottom is so big it's got its own gravitational field.

I had a fear of becoming anything a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor but if you become a doctor that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open your field is the entire human condition.

I was getting a lot of editorial as in lots of pages in 'Vogue ' but it's far more important to get your dresses on the back of a famous person. Charlotte Rampling in Bruce Oldfield. That sells.

As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn't actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course as we all know from fairy stories when you achieve that ambition you find out you don't want it.

I don't mean being famous is a perk because one knows that it's not necessarily a perk but there are certain perks to being well-known and respected in one's field. Public perks. Like I don't know general friendliness and willingness to please just to point out two.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy tragedy and intrigue.

I wanted the players to feel like they were part of a family to be conscious of that controlled togetherness as they made that slow entrance onto the field. It had a great psychological effect on the opposing team too. They'd never seen anything like it.