I've learned not to let people judge me in how I want to live my life. Every single woman is an individual, and there's no one path. You just have to take the path that you think is right for you.
I've never been so star struck in my life as when I met President Obama and Bill Clinton... and at the same time, no less! I'm not one to be at a loss for words, and that was a moment when I really was speechless. It was a big, big night.
I find it an absolute pleasure to read travel guides, especially the Michelin guides, and their description of places I know I'll probably never visit. I spend a large part of my life reading descriptions of restaurants.
I think people in Montreal smoke a lot, and I used to smoke when I was 17-18, and just picked it up when I was playing juniors. But I think I stopped when I was 22, which was a big decision in my life.
This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.
People think that we bought a lot of things during Nawaz Sharif's time and that I am very close to him. I have never met Nawaz Sharif, one to one, in my life.
I enjoyed growing up part of my life in Virginia Beach. We had the ocean and the beach and a beautiful landscape. We were outdoors all the time and we played outside.
I've spent most of my life trying to wear a persona that didn't quite fit and when I started writing books, it was like finally becoming the right person.
I've got used to criticisms and, naturally, I try to make sure I don't listen to the more extreme ones because most of the people who have taken their right-wing extremist view of my life are people that I've never met.
When I went to see certain shows when I was a kid, they changed my life. They made me tap into that place inside myself that I was unable to get to, so music is that tool, that bridge, and that's the kind of music I'm interested in making.
To this day, I have people I might meet who will make assumptions about my life based on fictional elements of 'The Squid And The Whale.' But I think that's par for the course if you make something that feels kind of real.
I just work - however people feel about it, I mean, at the end of the day, if I'm waiting for accolades, I could be waiting all my life, but I don't need that stuff to validate me. I just do what makes me happy.
It suddenly struck me - I'm 70 years old. I wonder if I could possibly end my life the way I started it: doing the most joyful thing I ever did, which is to sing.
I am a happy person and I choose to be a positive person. I think some people think my life has been tragic and there have been these horrible dramas but things really have been, and are, fine.
I decided if I couldn't be a writer, my life would be miserable. I had this imaginary room of references to all the books I had read, a kind of bubble, in which I lived.
I don't want to be Mr. Romantic Leading Man. I don't want to be the Dance Dude. I don't want to be the Action Guy. If I had to do any one of those all my life, it'd drive me crazy.
I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story.
More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.
All of my life, when things got too difficult, I folded up the tent and went to bed. I couldn't stand a challenge... I was terrified of confrontation. I was very laid-back, and just wouldn't get involved or fight back.
I have spent my life on the road waking in a pleasant, or not so pleasant hotel, and setting off every morning after breakfast hoping to discover something new and repeatable, something worth writing about.
The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn't like it.
