My mother had died when I wrote my first book. I was twenty-seven, so it was right at the beginning of my writing life. I don't know if she had lived, if I would have done it, certainly not quite like I did. But, you can't rethink it. You wrote what you wrote, it meant something to other people, and that's your good.

Is it possible that my sons-in-law will do toilets? If we raise boys to know that diapers need to be changed and refrigerators need to be cleaned, there's hope for the next generation.

You have to have a certain kind of thickening of the hide. I mean, I'm not particularly worried about what other people think. If other people think that I was not the world's most perfect mother, they are completely right.

I think that certainly the artists of the '40s, '50s and '60s were fighting a very conformist society, which didn't give them enough space to live or create, and they were bucking all kinds of spoken and unspoken rules.

I would prefer you not to say, "That was the most terribly written piece I've ever read." That would hurt me. But you don't think I'm the best person in the world? Well, alright.

I have always been fascinated by the human mind, conscious and unconscious - that is what writing and reading is about, too. The why of your life and the why of your choices and the what has happened that you know and the what that you don't know is really riveting, and psychoanalysts share my wonder at how it all unfolds.

I think our material is our lives. That's part of being a modern writer, and we have to use it.