Although my mother didn't necessarily approve of teenage girls wearing heels, she made an exception for me when I was 14 because she didn't want me to be self-conscious about my height - or to slouch.

I had to learn to sew when I was growing up, because nothing else fitted me.

As a designer, when someone wears my clothes, the biggest compliment I can receive is that the woman looks amazing because my designs have flattered her, not taken over her. I take that philosophy to heart myself each morning when I am getting ready for the day.

You can celebrate the female form in comfort. We left corsets behind in the dark ages, so why bring them back now?

In our family health, it's about having a balanced life, about laughing and staying on a positive note.

I know people talk about poverty and other factors, but there is very little I can do to ensure that a child has a stable two-parent home. But what if we can give them a shot in the classroom with a stable, high-standards environment?

Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice.

My parents divorced. There was the usual awkward business of going between them, but I was mostly with my mother. She remarried to a Greek painter Nico Ghika, so we were always around artists and intellectuals.