It's true: theatre has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I always liked everything about it. As a child, I used to get so excited about performing, I'd get the giggles.
Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.
My maternal grandmother, Penelope, was a very big figure in my life. She was a child of the Raj, born in India, a debutante who hobnobbed with royals, then married a Canadian, Bill Aitken, who became MP for Bury St Edmunds.
Parents talk a lot about how much strength and dedication it takes to raise a child. I think it also takes a lot of strength and dedication to carve out a life that doesn't seem normal to anyone else.
Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.
Perhaps life is actually more confusing and unknowable to an adult than a child, but grown-ups have learned to deceive themselves and act as if they understand what's going on; and some are elected to high office on the basis of their ability to crea...
A father is a person who's around, participating in a child's life. He's a teacher who helps to guide and shape and mold that young person, someone for that young person to talk to, to share with, their ups and their downs, their fears and their conc...
With my writing, because I live it, I have to be consumed by it, and that means you have to forget your other life, which is constantly pulling you from your work.
As a child, I was an observer, a listener for the stories of grown-ups. I led a quiet, solitary life with my mother, interrupted in the evenings by the arrival of my father who preferred to live in a state of emergency.
It was just this interesting, my first, the first time you hear your child in any way criticise you. It's the worst review of your life and it's really relieving to find out that they don't know what they're saying.
No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.
I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.
It's terrifying, that unconditional love you have for a child. I still wonder if she really came from me, from my womb. It's a miracle. I don't understand it. I live it very intensely.
My fans kept asking where they could get clothes like 'Destiny's Child's', so it was only natural for us to do a clothing line. I was adamant about not putting my name on something that I didn't love.
I didn't have a fireworks moment for my salvation. I had a falling in love with Jesus in Sunday school when I was a very young child.
I didn't know I'd ever be able to love my second child like I love my first; she came out, and I was amazed I could love them both equally.
No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always feel the same challenge - how do you shape this story into a book that people are going to love.
Dancing is my number one love. That was my first goal as a child. I would love to do stage, maybe do Chicago. I love being in front of an audience. It's so stimulating. I also love to barbecue.
Like every child growing up in America, I read 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' I liked them well enough, but I didn't love them.
I really like being pregnant. Not that there aren't things I don't love, but when I think about what my body is doing - creating a child - it just blows my mind. I'm in awe of the process and science.
As far as female vocalists, I love Heart, Joan Jett, Courtney Love, Laura Branigan, Linda Ronstadt, Barbra Streisand - or going back to when I was a child, Aileen Quinn, the original Annie.
