I've never been Romeo who meets a girl and falls for her immediately. It's been a much slower process for me each time I've gone into a relationship.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

I hate committing myself to anything. It's probably the lack of discipline, honestly. I'm probably a spoiled brat worried about getting my way every time.

I can't wait to be that age and hanging out with a bunch of people hanging out all day playing golf and going to the beach, all my own age. We'd be laughing and having a good time and getting loopy on our prescription drugs. Driving golf carts around. I can't wait.

I'm someone who loves to enjoy life and tries to focus on real things and real friendships. That's why I live very simply. I'm a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl. I don't spend much time fixing myself up or trying to look cool. I live like a normal person and even though I'm in a very high-profile business, I really don't let it affect the way I live.

I haven't deliberately set out to play the blonde bombshell in my movies. In fact, it's probably been quite the opposite. After the success of The Mask, I wasn't offered all that many blonde bombshell parts, to be honest. I think people believed from the beginning that I could actually walk and talk at the same time.

You get kind of bored being in catalogues all the time.

Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think about the risks... of our increasing globalization and increasing worldwide economic interdependence.

I've always been interested in a lot of things, and a lot of things at the same time, and I always tried to explain them to myself. I ask a lot of questions.

I'd rather spend my leisure time doing what some people call my work and I call my fun.

I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book... and I began putting more work into environmental history.

This little kid pointed at me and said, 'You look disgusting!' That was the first time I thought maybe I did. I decided I'd better start eating. I'm just thankful that I made it through with relatively few scars.

At the time, nobody knew what it was. It had no name. When everything else is out of your control, you can control your eating. You end up cutting a lot of things off. Nothing reaches you. I was very happy then - that was the oddity.

This is a time for a national conversation. A conversation about the document that binds us as a nation and a people. That document, of course, is the Constitution.

Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire.