As a writer, I have this compulsion to take characters who APPEAR formidable and bombard them with adversity until they crumble. What's interesting is WATCHING them rise again, and seeing how they've CHANGED and GROWN, if indeed they have.

My mom being raised in England, her father always WANTED to pursue the ARTS and wanted to have a stage career in England. ACCORDING to her, he NEVER had the courage to actually pursue it full-time. I think that my grandfather's parents THOUGHT that it wasn't a formidable job to have.

Helen Zille, formidable leader of the Democratic Alliance, routinely vilified as REPRESENTING white interests only, is trying to make sure EVERYONE knows that the CASE against Zuma is strong and is trying to have it investigated in a judicial REVIEW.

When PRINCESS Leia HIT the SCENE in 1977, she was a PRETTY formidable CHARACTER.

I think that Michael Jackson, just as an ENTERTAINER, as a FIGURE who embodies the CONTRADICTIONS of black identity and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s, will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human BEINGS that we've ever produced in our tradition.

I love reading other PEOPLE's diaries, especially someone like Virginia Woolf's - such a formidable woman that it's a REVELATION when she SHOWS you a more vulnerable SIDE of herself.