I remember the time I said, 'I don't think you love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself.'

He had lunch with Cecilia that afternoon. They ate their corned beef on rye and cream cheese with lox in a diner peopled by waiters who looked like they´d met with utter disappointment and become attached to it.

Sexuality is a place where people are very vulnerable and can be experiencing and embodying very raw forces that they don't really understand and there's a question of how much you should control and how much you should play with those and what those forces really are, how you really feel about them. That's perennial.

I think women who are very creative and giving members of society can be respected and accepted.

I think, over the course of one's lifetime, there are always certain core elements that are intriguing to you, and you take different looks as you get older, but it's something you keep coming back to. I've always been interested in the relationship between vulnerability and control. That's something that's a big thing for people, whoever they are, no matter how old you are. I think at different times, you're more aware than others.

When you approach the second half of your life, you start to unconsciously consider what you're passing on. As a writer, that's obviously part of what you're doing. And as a teacher, that's another way of passing on information, history, or whatever you have.

Point of view changes so much as time goes on. And it's important to acknowledge that the truth is multifaceted. And yet that conversation has a very different meaning now because of this whole alternative facts thing, calling everything you don't like "fake news."