That's the wonderful thing about drama and writing and fiction: it's this wonderful shared experience that we all have. We can see into each other's lives.

On a fundamental level - I know so many women in their 30s who didn't get married, or they did and it didn't work out, or they didn't have children because they were trying to get their careers going, or because they were expected to be independent, plus have a family. They didn't feel secure enough.

Nobody seemed to have any perspective any longer. Those were low points. But we got through it.

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.

Thats when you know youve found somebody special. When you can just shut the f**k up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.

You know what daring really is to me? It's maybe much more simple: the willingness to get up and try it again. It's not about whether or not you fall down, it's how you get back up. And I've taken quite a few tumbles, myself.

When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, Not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however. But Buddhism has had a major effect on who I am and how I think about the world. What I have learned is that I like all religions, but only parts of them.