Even, today, when people tell me I'm beautiful, I do not believe a word of it.

I think everybody has a hard time connecting, but as you get older and you want more and you expect more and you know more, it's just different. If you start wanting too much from it without it naturally unfolding, then that makes it bad. If you start not wanting anything, then you are not serious. I mean it's just this conundrum of issues.

And also I think particularly as a female, you're taught to be defensive your whole life. You're taught not to be aggressive.

I guess I'm lucky to have been blindsided. I'm lucky to have gotten into fistfights, in a way. I'm lucky I learned how to stop them.

I'm very happy at home. I love to just hang out with my daughter, I love to work in my garden. I'm not a gaping hole of need.

Life sweeps you up. Some people resist a lot. I probably haven't resisted very much.

It's one of the things that weirdly I always used to like about my job: that expressing the emotions of a writer or someone creative and breathing empathy and life into a character people can then identify with, that they'd feel less alone.