A lot of my time was spent searching, thinking and planning my life.

Financial hardships were rough on us, even though Mom had a good job at G.M.

Most recently my battle has been against AIDS and the discrimination surrounding it.

Mayor Koch, of New York, was the first public figure to give me support.

I come from a very athletic family. But I didn't have the typical Jewish sports heroes. I mean, like lots of Jewish kids I admired Sandy Koufax. But I didn't look up to him as the one person who gave me the desire to push on and succeed. My brothers did that for me.

I have already seen death, and I know that death is supporting me in my cause of education. Death does not want to kill me.

As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

Because I lost a daughter, eight years old, to cystic fibrosis, I think that anytime that I'm dealing with people who, like Andrea Yeager, are trying to help those sick children, I identify very much with them.