More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.
The Bible says that Christians are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. On the job, in the grocery store, even among unsaved friends and family members, God's people are there to bring seasoning to an unsavory situation.
I was actually born in New York, and spent some of my childhood in Boston. But my family moved to San Diego when I was 12, and I went to high school here.
I am insanely superstitious. All the woman in my family are, beginning with my grandmother, who would leave red ribbons under the beds and taught us how to find four-leaf clovers.
For me, there's nothing better than getting immersed in a sprawling, epic, multi-generational family saga, and 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the most sprawling, epic, and multi-generational of them all.
Perhaps the single most important thing for a child is to be with a loving, supportive family. And all things being equal, any child of any race should be placed with any qualified parents without restriction or special conditions.
The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.
Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, that's 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me.
I do interviews and signings and readings and all of these people just hang off my every word. And then I go home and have dinner with my family and nobody lets me get a word in.
Epilepsy is a disease in the shadows. Patients are often reluctant to admit their condition - even to close family, friends or co-workers - because there's still a great deal of stigma and mystery surrounding the disease that plagued such historical ...
I was the family alien. Both my parents are quite creative, but I was... appalling... always putting on little shows. I was rather a shy child, not a natural performer, but there was a performative edge to everything I did.
I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He loved me.
I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it's lasting me very well.
I've just been more interested in doing film right now and I don't want to go away from my family for six months, which was what I would have had to have done if I did the play on Broadway.
The thing about adolescence is that you are emerging from a state of obscurity. You are coming out into the world from your family. Your family can seem normal because it is your family and all you know, but in fact it is a mess.
Doing projects really gives people self-confidence. Nothing is better than taking the pie out of the oven. What it does for you personally, and for your family's idea of you, is something you can't buy.
As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past, those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce.
My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal. Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.
I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is often writing about the same sort of themes, but taking different angles on them.
I'm from a family of teachers. My father would drown me in the bathtub if my daughter didn't graduate from college. I don't care who she is or what she does. Just get the diploma.
I was ten years old in 1969, and while we lived in Arizona that year, I spent most of the summer staying with family friends in Portland, Oregon while my parents visited Spain. It was an adventure all around.
