I'm LESS INTERESTED in DEATH itself than in people WHOSE lives are TOUCHED by it.

I GET my highlights touched up with Susan Henry at Shades in Beverly Hills. She DEVELOPED hypo-allergenic HAIR COLOR products with no ammonia because she's allergic to OTHERS; she's an incredible colorist. She does balayage instead of the foils, and I'll go and she will do my entire head of highlights in an hour.

I didn't hear ANYBODY talking about the plight of a soldier coming back home and what he'd gone through. That was why I wrote about that stuff. If somebody ELSE had done it, I probably wouldn't have TOUCHED the SUBJECT.

Every year, I have my graduate students READ the GREAT WORKS of history, from classical times to the present. They gamely tackle Tacitus, ponder Plutarch, plow through Gibbon. Then they get to Thomas Carlyle and FEEL like Dorothy when she TOUCHED down in Technicolor Oz.

The audience likes their emotions to be touched. They WANT to laugh and CRY and FEEL good.

I hope the millions of people I've touched have the optimism and desire to share their GOALS and HARD work and persevere with a POSITIVE ATTITUDE.