Google is my best friend and my worst enemy. It's fabulous for research, but then it becomes addictive. I'll have a character eating an orange, and next thing I'm Googling types of oranges, I'm visiting chat rooms about oranges, I'm learning the history of the orange.

My husband does say it is Australia's job and my family's job to keep me grounded. They do a very good job!

So many people have said to me that when you become a school parent, it is like going back to school yourself. Some of those insecurities come out and are projected through your child.

Often, I think bullying - especially in its adult, verbal forms - is the sort of thing you don't realize till the end of the day, and it's a horrible feeling to realize something wasn't just a bland statement but was actually cruel. But then, we're all capable of things that are breathtakingly cruel.

The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it.

Now we have black and white elected officials working together. Today, we have gone beyond just passing laws. Now we have to create a sense that we are one community, one family. Really, we are the American family.

It's heartbreaking to think that the joy of building a family is being dimmed by the economic squeeze young people are feeling.

Both my parents are well educated; my father worked for the CBI before becoming a businessman, and my mother was a civil surgeon. But I did not want to be a doctor.