Growing up in the icy isolation of Hibbing, Minn., Dylan, who was still Robert Allen Zimmerman then, found comfort in the country, blues, and early rock 'n' roll that he heard at night on a Louisiana radio station whose signal came in strong and clear.

In the role of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie seemed in 1972 like a strange alien creature, not so much coming from another planet as from a future age. His purpose: to warn us about a dangerous society where values were to be turned inside out.

I was getting calls in 1970 from teenagers, little girls, and they'd say, 'Oh, I like your stories about so-and-so so much. How old are you? 20?' 'No. Older than that.' '30?' 'No. Older than that.' And they'd hang up.

The greatest impact of 'We Are the World' seems to have been the video, which lets us see the singers take their turns at the microphone without any sense of star ego.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

The thing to me about this sport, all the fans, everyone that watches, everyone that has a career has had a bad day at work. If you have a project, you have a quota that you have to meet, you can screw up at it. At the end of the day, you get to go home to your family; you can bring your work home with you or not.

One of the most beautiful experiences our family shared was feeling the love and bond that came to life when my mother was battling her ovarian cancer. In a way, it brought our family together and opened up relationships and a closeness that was not felt before her diagnosis.

I don't think I have enough German blood in me to get into the royal family.