If I had a personal wish for the new ideas in this new book it would be that every parent every counselor every teacher every professor every sports coach that deals with young people would understand the three circle concept.

As I get older I think contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.

My parents divorced when I was born and my mother is a political science professor like a feminist Mormon which is sort of an oxymoron.

I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.

I've always been a writer because I've always been a student. My mom's a retired professor so I come from a very academic background. I love writing you know?

My mom is like this hard-core liberal feminist. She's a professor in Boston and she's been teaching women's studies for 30 years and international politics.

Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big the strong the wonderful. In truth women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion I am not a professor.

I'm afraid I talk a lot too much perhaps. I should have been a lawyer or a college professor or a windy politician though I'm glad I am not any of these.