Quotes

I like not being noticed. It has been a struggle because I love performing, but if I'm in a group of people and someone has a bigger personality, I'm like, 'Go ahead, and have fun!'

I'd love to be a diva. But I'd then have to send so many apology notes for my abhorrent behaviour.

I saw some musicals at dinner theaters where I grew up. But I didn't go to a big theater to see one until probably after I graduated from high school when I took myself to see 'Tommy' when it was on tour. I absolutely loved it.

Moving out to L.A. for me was a leap of faith. I was very secure in my dinner theater world; I loved it, and I was just like, 'I think there's something else out there for me and I just have to go for it.'

Golf isn't just about hitting a lot of drivers. I grew up playing on my front lawn, chipping and putting into soup cans, out of the ivy and over rose bushes and hedges - the little Alcott Golf and Country Club. I just loved having a wedge in my hands.

To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.

My ideal meal varies, depending on the time of year. Lobster on a deck overlooking a beach at sunset is one - but all my kids have to be there, because they are all lobster-lovers. Making a bolognese sauce over pappardelle for my husband on a winter evening, because he loves my bolognese sauce and it's his comfort food.

I don't think writers really choose their subjects. I think the subjects, the topics, the themes, choose us, and then we make the most of what we have. For Trollope, society; for Roth, Jews. For me, apparently, love. Why hide it?

I am interested in struggle - between our hearts and our head, between principle and desire - and one of those struggles is with mortality; and no one at all is immune to it, which makes it even more interesting to me. Some people fall in love, some don't. Some sky dive, some don't. Everyone who lives, ages.

It is a wonderful, moving, heart-filling experience to sit with the man or woman you love and your beloved children and know that all are happy to be just where they are with each other and loving one another. This doesn't happen very often.

Whenever you see shrinks on television, they're so clearly written by patients. They're either idealized or they're demonized or they love their patients. All they ever think about is their patients.

If you're an American reader, you can love short stories the way other Americans love baseball; this is our game, people! We have more than two hundred years of know-how and knack, of creativity.

I need to tone up, as I eat a lot of fast food. I love Maccy D's, Subway and Domino's.

It was a lot of hard work, but everyone loved my Amy Childs' Collection, so I decided to have a boutique as well as my salon. I love designing my own dresses, and everyone is loving the collection. I can't believe how well the boutique and the clothing online is going.

I've always have loved reality programmes. 'Big Brother,' 'I'm A Celebrity,' they're my guilty pleasure.

I love 'Made In Chelsea,' and I think it's a great show.

I'm a huge fan of 'Geordie Shore.' I watch it, and it's just my guilty pleasure. I sit there and can't believe what they are like. However, I have met all the girls, and they are lovely.

When it comes to designer, you can't beat Victoria Beckham. I love her stuff.

I grew up in a quiet suburb in South Texas, and loved the in-your-faceness of the East Village. In the early days, when I was still unemployed, I'd lie on a bench in Tompkins Square Park perusing the listings in the 'Village Voice' for a place to live.

I am definitely a Type A personality, always rushing around, trying to do too much, not good at just lying on the beach. But I'm so thankful for everything I have: wonderfully supportive parents and sisters, the best husband in the world, terrific students I love teaching and hanging out with, and above all, my two amazing daughters.

I see my upbringing as a great success story. By disciplining me, my parents inculcated self-discipline. And by restricting my choices as a child, they gave me so many choices in my life as an adult. Because of what they did then, I get to do the work I love now.

I say 'I love you' to my daughters every day.

I really feel that most things are difficult at the beginning and they become fun, something you love, only after you've worked at them. Making children do something hard can, in the long run, be a great parental service.

I was raised, myself, by extremely strict but also extremely loving Chinese immigrant parents. To this day, I believe that their having high expectations for me, coupled with love, was the greatest gift that anyone's ever given me. And so that's why, even though my husband is not Chinese, I try to raise my own two daughters the same way.

Everything I do as a mother builds on a foundation of love and compassion.