The most important thing is to be happy myself with what I am doing.
It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.
I had to share a room with my sister, who is five and a half years older than I am. We didn't get along well, and I felt that I had no privacy. So books were my privacy, because no one could join me in a book, no one could comment on the action or make fun of it. I used to spend hours reading in the bathroom -- and we only had one bathroom in our small apartment!
I didn't write professionally at first. It took me nine years to get anything published. At the beginning I mostly wrote picture books, which were rejected by every children's book publisher in America. The first book of mine to be accepted for publication was ELLA ENCHANTED, and not one but two publishers wanted it. That day, April 17, 1996, was one of the happiest in my life.
If beginnings terrify you, or if you just plain don't like writing them, or if they bore you, skip 'em.
Although we didn't invite Lucinda, she arrived anyway-with a gift. "No need," Char and I chimed together. "Remember when you were a squirrel," Mandy said.
Luck was with me. I saw no spiders. Luck was against me. I saw no specters.
The first guy who came up with the concept of religion was sitting out under a tree. I'm sure of that.
Once you find a warmup routine that works, repeat it as habitually as possible.
We've got some very strong and robust ladies, but, when your life is at risk, I think the strain of that in a competitive situation will tell when you're trying to win. The mental stress I think would be pretty difficult for a lady to deal with in a practical fashion. I just don't think they have aptitude to win a Formula 1 race.
My old school, St Stella’s, only goes to Year Ten and most of my friends now go to Pius Senior College, but my mother wouldn’t allow it because she says the girls there leave with limited options and she didn’t bring me up to have limitations placed upon me. If you know my mother, you’ll sense there’s an irony there, based on the fact that she is the Queen of the Limitation Placers in my life.