If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.

I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me.

Music has been more a solitary, creative thing. The acting side of things and working in movies has helped me collaboratively with music in terms of helping me get ideas across to other people and making it more of a team efforts.

America's liberal arts universities have long been safe zones for leftist thinking, protected ivory towers for the pseudo-elite who earn their livings writing papers nobody reads about gender roles in the poetry of Maya Angelou.

One lifetime is never enough to accomplish one's horticultural goals. If a garden is a site for the imagination, how can we be very far from the beginning?

For me, when I do my best acting, it's mainly imagination. Then I really have a lot of fun with it.