Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.

But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.

Oprah is signed on to help, and a lot of celebrity friends have agreed to help me raise money for Make-A-Wish. We want to make the world a better place for innocent children. I cried my heart out when my father died from cancer. I wish I was smarter, wiser like a doctor, to save these children from dying.

I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly.

Global health issues remind us - perhaps more than any other issue - that we are all children of the same extended family.

I didn't get into fitness until my late twenties. I had put on a lot of weight; I was quite chubby and feeling really depressed. But exercise helped everything - the body and the mind.