Growing up, I never knew that Raffi turned down celebrity endorsements, TV shows, and specials and refused to make merchandise, but it makes sense given how I think about him: My memories are limited to his voice through the record player and the album covers I stared at.

As a journalist, you don't tend to interview people with a view to becoming their friend. You can't expect that. It's not professional.

I've written about women's lives, and I just want to write about them from being a woman. I don't need feminism on top of that when I'm writing.

I didn't study English literature - I studied philosophy at university - so Kierkegaard, Nietzsche - these people are among the most important writers to me. So my interest is in the big questions more than it is in storytelling.

I had learned of Gertrude Stein's bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist.

My memoir is being published by Beaufort Books and will be available fall of 2015. It's about my unusual life as a child actor and how I made the unpopular choice to leave Hollywood, grow up, and stop pretending.

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.

If any successes has come to me, it came because I insisted on thinking things through. That's all I was capable of doing in life, was thinking pretty hard about trying to get the right answer, and then acting on it. I never learned to do anything else.