I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema.

When I came out, and for many years afterwards, it had become a habit for me to sit and read and read and read, like an obsession. I would take 20 books, and not come out until I'd finished them. It took me a while to change that habit.

I got kind of burned out, so I moved to Florida. I was down there for 10 or 12 years, raising children.

For 40 years, I put my body through a tremendous amount of work.

I still have more to fight for in the coming years.

I planned to stop in 2002 after the Salt Lake City Olympics. I felt able to remain competitive another four years, and I wanted to stop while I'm still at the top.

Franz Klammer was my great idol in my younger years.

I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk.

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.

We have been frustrated that there are a number of incumbents in Maryland offices who have been in office for years and years and show no movement or desire to pass the torch.

I just try to try to keep an attitude that I don't know what I'm doing. Not to the point where I'm beating myself up, but I just go in thinking that I have a lot to learn. And I hope I still have that attitude 30 years from now.

Most of the women who have offered themselves for public office over the years have done so, I believe, more because of the 'dirt' than in spite of it.

But, finally, I just realized a few years ago that this is where I belonged. I mean everything I had was invested here, emotionally and every other way. And the country had invested enormously in me.

The only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you're going for a job and you don't get it.

We went out for six weeks a year. We first started in Mexico and we did that for so many years that we finally said we've got to explore and start going globally. And then we started going all over the world.