The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.

When I'm creating a character, it's a little bit like what my theater teachers used to tell me about Stanislavsky, like if you're using sense memory to do a scene - if you have to cry in a scene, you try to remember something in your life that made you cry and you use that in order to get the tears.

Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.

Grief is natural,' she said. 'Overcoming it is a matter of choice.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.

The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.

So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.