In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked.

It's a funny things about human nature. Nobody ever wonders why they've got a healthy brother or a perfect kiddie. Anything goes wrong, though, we soon start why, oh why...

I'm thankful my parents obliged me to live with the unvarnished truth: I might not have been a looker, but I was a better speller than the prettiest girl in my class, and I was funnier, too.

I've been lucky enough to travel widely. When you're based in Europe, it's very easy to go to Madrid or Budapest for the weekend. I also lived in Italy for ten years and now live in Ireland.

And there he lay in his bed, a broken man, worn out by a way of life which had been thrust upon him because of the antics of a wayward pig.

As you think you travel and as you love you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

Mother humor is such a universal theme. I wrote a show called '25 Questions for a Jewish Mother.' I had people coming up to me after the show saying, 'I'm Baptist, and my mother is just like yours.'

Look, the president can discharge all 93 U.S. attorneys for no reason at all, but not for a bad reason.

I don't think I've ever been as scared in my life as I was to be extraordinarily honest with my kids.

If all babies are so cute, how the hell do we have so many ugly people in the world?

The Paramount executives were so pleased with Sunset Boulevard that they asked me to do a publicity tour.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

Playing the ukulele and singing is a fantastic stress reliever. So is cleaning! Scrubbing away at the dirt helps clear my mind as well.

Scale is of prime importance and I think that oversized scale is better than undersized scale.