You see, anything I imagined, I could draw.

Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.

People never knew we were poor, but out of that poverty came the most incredible inventions - board games, recipes... we never stopped inventing.

It's taken me a long time to become the person I am, for all the ugliness to fall away. The rotten flesh is gone, and the seed is there. I can touch that now.

Only a couple of times have I ever been to church and felt enlightened by it.

After I got this job at the syndicate, I started sending them money so they could go on trips and do the things they could never afford to do. All the while, I never knew that my mother was socking money away.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

My brother was a great audience, and if he liked the picture, he would laugh and laugh and laugh, and he would want to keep the picture. Making people laugh with an image I had created... what power that was!

But I married a guy who treated me very badly, but I was happy. I was miserable, so I was happy.

Yes, and when I had Aaron, he left me, and I didn't know how to raise a child. And I wasn't close to my parents, and because I was too proud to go to my parents for help, I mistreated that little baby. I didn't want a baby.

My mother was a very literate person who had educated herself. She had an exceptional vocabulary.

No matter how old you are, there's always something good to look forward to.

Complaining is good for you as long as you're not complaining to the person you're complaining about.

I've had some tremendous adventures, good and bad. It's part of the novel, and a novel isn't interesting if it doesn't have some good and bad. And you don't know what good is if bad hasn't been a part of your life.

In a way, a certain amount of self-criticism is a good thing, because it keeps you humble. Realizing that no matter what success you've achieved, you can still make enemies makes you humble, too.

If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper.

You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian.

But even though all this was going on at home, if someone had tried to take me away and put me in a children's home, I couldn't have handled it. Even though my mother was very brutal, it was my home.

I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

I often think you bring unhappiness on yourself, because if you don't like yourself very much, you allow yourself to be influenced by people who reinforce that.

And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.

I was just so lucky to have a wonderful life after a tough marriage.

Aaron and I will be joined at the hip until the day we die. We have loved and hated each other since the day he was born. He's very much a part of my heart. He's going to broadcasting college now, and he'll do fine. But he came into a world that did not welcome him.

I know it sounds crazy, but I have had far more connection with my parents after their deaths.

You see, anything I imagined, I could draw.

Sure, I've had some bad times, but everybody does. But people don't get to talk about them like I do, unless they do to a therapist. People don't get to put them in the paper like I do.

When Kate was born, she was born into a world of joy and happiness and confidence. The difference between the children is night and day. She's happy, she's thriving, she's full of self-confidence. I tell her she's beautiful every day before I send her off to school.

That's what my mother did. And my father was the first person she'd met who treated her kindly. She was terrified of men, and she married a very meek, kind, dear man. And she had the upper hand. She ruled the roost.

I loved the Little Lulu stories, where she would fantasize that her bedroom rug would turn into a pool of water, and she could dive down into the center of the world.

An apology is the super glue of life. It can repair just about anything.

An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything.

Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night. Without the satisfaction.

Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night? Without the satisfaction.

Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction.

The song 'Baby Baby,' I so love that song because I wrote it about my first daughter.

I definitely want to act and I want to sing. If those two fall through, I want to become a writer, probably, like a songwriter for other people, or a novel writer. I write a lot, and I read a lot. I like reading fiction.

People assume that computers will do everything that humans do. Not good. People are different from each other and they are all really different from computers.

Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American.

If you cant be happy and content by yourself then you shouldnt be in a relationship.

Physical activity can get you going when you are immobilized. Get action in your life, and don't just talk about it. Get into the arena!

When you find what you want in life you just gotta go for it.

If you're wasting time having fun, you're not wasting time.

In Ski Party we are reading up on how to have fun without sex. That was the theme of every AIP picture!

My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.

But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.

Light is to darkness what love is to fear; in the presence of one the other disappears.

Over the years, I've loved being on stage with an orchestra, waving my hands around.

I thought 'Dead Man's Shoes' was a masterpiece.

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.