I was the only female in the special trials unit for many years.

Where a man is forceful, a woman is shrill.

To me, one of the big silver linings of the Simpson trial is the advances we've made in understanding domestic violence as a lethal problem. Before that trial, I think there was a widespread sense that it was a family affair, a normal part of a relationship, not really a crime. The reality is that it's very much a crime, and a very serious one.

When I first started, it was so male-heavy, so male-dominated, that on the 18th floor of the criminal courts building, which was where I worked, there were three men's bathrooms and only one women's bathroom.

When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts.

The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.

When we had to do book reports, I would pick a book that no one read and just make it up and turn that in. I got praised for my imagination.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.