If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.

Married at 23, a mother at 24, and blindsided by divorce at 28, I found myself struggling, like many young women I meet today, to strike a balance between my personal life and my career.

Very few women manage to have it all; certainly not all at once.

I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'

Even Milton Friedman - doyen of radical free market thought - was willing to consider some government intervention into primary education on the grounds that it is unfair for children to not get a chance in life because they were born to poor parents.

My personal life is lived as 'me,' but my professional life is lived as other people. In other words, when I go to the office, I lie down, dream, and become 'someone else.' That's my job.

If two of your films don't do well, people say you're out in the cold and your career is over. One film does well, and you've had the best year of your life! I don't believe in all that's written.

I like the fact that I'm involved in a career that gives me so many different mediums to perform in.