As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually.

I have always wished I could learn to be a potter. I love collecting ceramics; it would be so fulfilling to create something lovely.

When I read to children, I try to become the characters. It's great if you can make a separate voice for each character. Sometimes you can lower your voice with excitement or get more intimate about it: you can lean forward and engage the children as a narrator or as a reader. It's particularly important that you find the voice that you want to use for each character, because then children can imagine that person as you're reading aloud. And of course, the illustrations help enormously.

You always do that with movie musicals. You prerecord and then you lip-synch to playback.

I think I'm one of the very lucky ladies.

My books have three W's on them, which are "words," "wisdom," and "wonder." Words inevitably lead to wisdom, and wisdom inevitably leads to wonder and awe at this phenomenal world around us.

I think family matters to me enormously. In fact, family is the first priority. If my family is good, I can do anything. If they're not, I'm a basket case.