In 'Love Story,' Oliver Barrett IV comes from generations of wealth and privilege, but when he meets working-class Jennifer Cavilleri, he can't resist. When they marry, his father disowns him, but they struggle on in love, until she's diagnosed with cancer and they can't afford the costly treatments.

I wrote a story about a man who is orphaned during the 1927 Mississippi River flood in Louisiana, and he's on the banks of levee, and he's starving. And there are other people starving, too. And he's so desperate, he's seven years old, that he finds a pig that's been abandoned. He kills it with a hammer, and he drags it back.

My mother was born in Switzerland, my stepfather in Canada.

All I am is a writer and a mom.

When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going; there was no reason to quit.

People in the precariat find themselves in the situation where the level of their education and qualifications is almost always higher than the sort of labour that they're going to be able to obtain.

I took part in plays in school and college, and that is when I realised this is what I wanted to do. My parents told me to finish education and then do what interested me. This is what all parents say, and I am glad that I did that. I took mass media and advertising in under-graduation.

I think if you have to pay for your education, you worry very seriously about you're going to do when you've got your degree.