It's kind of a subversive act to tell a story of a woman past a certain age, to develop a four-hour movie based on a marriage and a story of two people past middle age.

Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

To sing is to love and affirm, _x000D_ to fly and to soar, _x000D_ to coast into the hearts of the people _x000D_ who listen _x000D_ to tell them that life is to live, _x000D_ that love is there, _x000D_ that nothing is a promise, _x000D_ but that beauty exists, _x000D_ and must be hunted for and found.

I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived.... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.