I Was Very Much A Child Of

Before She Became The Girl From Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, The First And Last And Only, Who Lived A Thousand Years-she Was Just A Little Girl In Iowa, Named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.

I Think Many Years Ago I Got On A Bus In L.a. And Drove Around To See The Stars' Homes, But That's The Extent Of My Direct Experience In Hollywood.

I Grew Up During The Cold War, When Everything Seemed Very Tenuous. For Many Years, Right Up Until The Fall Of The Berlin Wall, I Had Vivid Nightmares Of Nuclear Apocalypse.

That Literary-popular Distinction Is, In My View, Vastly Overstated. At The Far Poles There Are Clearly Books That Are Purely Commercial And Purely Literary, Written For Audiences That Want To See The Same Thing Enacted Over And Over And Over Again. But The Middle Is Where Most People Read And Most People Write.

Real Courage Is Doing The Right Thing When Nobody's Looking. Doing The Unpopular Thing Because It's What You Believe, And The Heck With Everybody.