I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and now my kids are growing up in Los Angeles, so that's culturally very different.

As a kid growing up St. Louis, Missouri, I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. Any time people talked about slavery, it was always something like, 'If I was a slave, I wouldn't have been putting up with that. I would have been out in a heartbeat.' And it's like, sure, it's a very easy thing to say.

Sarah Paulson is the most prepared and professional actor I've had the privilege of working with. I learned so much about preparation and attention to detail and speaking up when something is not right.

I think what Hollywood is learning at large is that there is profitability in stories that are culturally specific and that you can only address the universal through the specific.

I came from a middle-class family. My dad was a professor; my mom was a nurse. I didn't come from money, and I didn't come from circles of power. I didn't come from the country club; I came from the town park.

I wrote the children's books, and those were wonderful tributes to my life as a daughter and a mother and just a thank-you to my parents for all the lessons in life they had passed on to me that I could pass onto my child and to other kids around the world.

I'm the youngest of four in a large, exhibitionist family. The only way to get attention was to throw yourself off the top of a ladder - as one of my cousins used to do - or make people laugh.

Having a writer in the family is a curse - for the family. I do feel more or less guilty when I'm writing.