I never wanted Mary Poppins to be my nanny. I wanted to be her when I grew up.

The more I do bookstores, the more people come up to me from church groups. I spoke at Pittsburg State College and had 2 or 3 ministers and book groups from a couple of churches.

Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day.

My six handbooks to Jewish life and lifecycle events mostly followed the trajectory of my adult Jewish life.

I love many kinds of music: world music, jazz, classical, pop.

Shakespeare in Love... such smart writing of an alternative view of history, and such beautiful acting. Like most Americans, I'm a sucker for the accent.

Until very recently men and women inhabited very separate spheres. There was always interconnection, passion, love. But men and women didn't hang out at the end of the day and chat about what their day was like at the office.

November is Jewish book month, so Jewish Community Centers all around the country have book fairs where they invite authors and sell books in advance of the holidays.

The real Mary Poppins got lost when Hollywood turned her into a cream puff.

The Sabbath is a weekly cathedral raised up in my dining room, in my family, in my heart.

My early childhood was spent in Newark, New Jersey, but my family moved to Denver when I was 12.

Biblical names are hot again.

There's something almost adolescent about Whitman's paean to everything that was and remains good about America.

Since 1985, I have written about contemporary Jewish practice and the Jewish community.

As a journalist I'm comfortable doing library research, and I did a lot! I had a fellowship at Radcliff for a year which gave me access to the Harvard system.

Whatever your relationship is to your sacred tradition in the West, you have some relationship to the Bible if only through the names of the characters.

One of my favorite poets, Neruda, writes close to the bone. Though I know only a little Spanish, I like to compare the Spanish and English lines and see how the translator worked.

My husband, Jim, converted to Judaism just before our wedding.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

The Bible - it's sort of the other person in the room. There's this book, the reader, and the Bible.

I never wanted Mary Poppins to be my nanny. I wanted to be her when I grew up.

I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets.

I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.

I have a 10-year track record of writing for the Jewish community.

When a shy person smiles, it's like the sun coming out.

I think there's a difference between calling people out and understanding the role that the press plays in a free society.

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

I write things in my house, and hopefully there's a reader out there who enjoys it and has an experience with it, but that's very different than a performer on stage, where there's an immediate dance with the audience. It's incredibly powerful.

I'm addicted to New York, and I like L.A., as I have kids there. Sometimes I think New Mexico is the one place where I could almost live there. It helps your acting; there's magic in that place.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

I did everything in my power not to be an actress. I went off and did a teacher-training course first, so I could teach English and Drama - because I'm not thick, surprisingly enough.

It is not the roaring thunder that smites, but the silent lightning.

If You Stop Struggling Then You Stop Life

Everybody blames the culture without taking responsibility.

It's good to have a foothold in reality, a base somewhere that's always been a base. Sharman Macdonald once said she needs life to write; she can't write if she's just in theatre all the time. I'm the same way, I think. I've always felt that if my life was all about the job, I wouldn't be so good at the job.

Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious.

The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever growing influence of the Bible.

Monetary inflation not only raises prices and destroys the value of the currency unit it also acts as a giant system of expropriation.

Life's too short to not be around nice people.

What I would like to see is sufficiently good education and health services being delivered to Aboriginal people so that they are prepared and ready to leave and join the economic mainstream if that's their choice.

I hope, what I hope the most is to be more successful as a mother than in show business, because to be a mother is the most difficult I will ever have to do.

The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has got dozens.

You always hear actors say, 'Theater is my first love,' and it is. It's a time when you really get to do what you do, and there's not a lot of waiting around and interruption and not a lot of money involved - sometimes money really clouds the waters of creativity.

For me exotic means beaches palm trees and sand and frolicking in the ocean.

In some respects I'm quite easily led, so I have to make sure I've got my own space, and that I feel comfortable in my working environment. It's very important for me to work with the right collaborators, as I can easily get led into a corner where I'm not comfortable.

The trouble with super heroes is what to do between phone booths.

These are Canadian and United States intelligence and law enforcement offices who are working in teams and who are using good intelligence and good law enforcement to really stop the criminals and terrorists before they ever get to the border.

I'm first and foremost an Irishman, by birth, by nature, by soul, but an American citizen through and through as well.

Just because you don't see someone doesn't mean the love has changed.