It's hard no to work, so I find a way to put myself back to work. And I think it's important, in between projects, for me to sit down with who I've just become and allow her to continue to evolve and find a home inside me before I go and become somebody else. But I think I also need to learn to relax and not prepare too much, just enjoy life. I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don't have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

We need policies for long-term security that are designed by women, focused on women, executed by women not at the expense of men, or instead of men, but alongside and with men.

Barefoot or first thing in the morning, I feel beautiful. I didn't always feel that way, but I feel that way now. When somebody loves you, and when you make somebody else happy, when your presence seems to make them happy, you suddenly feel like the most beautiful person in the world.

Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.

If you have problems, it's something to apologize for, to be embarrassed about, not to revel in. It's the perfectionist in me...That's why people call me the "bossy little thing"-I'm the bossiest person around.

I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

The side of fairytales I don't like is that they always have happy endings, that there's just good and evil, and things are perfect. But life is a little more complicated, and that's what I try to teach my kids.