I've always told my children that Americans will tell you pretty much anything, but that convention dictates that we don't like to talk money or politics.

My mother was born in Switzerland, my stepfather in Canada.

I love election day, and I love to vote.

The two words, in the American lexicon, are never good. Pink slip. The first time I ever heard it when I was young was when Kaiser Steel handed out pink slips to many of my neighbors and relatives. Layoffs were about efficiency, sales figures for raw materials or refrigerators.

My father, born in Colorado, met my mother, born in Switzerland, when he went into the finance company where she worked and asked for a loan.

I first drew the attention of my future husband when we were fourteen, on the freshman school bus for an epic field trip from Riverside, Calif. to Los Angeles, where we were taken to the L.A. Zoo as well as the Natural History Museum.

In 'Love Story,' Oliver Barrett IV comes from generations of wealth and privilege, but when he meets working-class Jennifer Cavilleri, he can't resist. When they marry, his father disowns him, but they struggle on in love, until she's diagnosed with cancer and they can't afford the costly treatments.

It's always fun to talk about a novel.

I'm trying to make the readers feel as if he or she is right there in the conversation, and so I don't try to manipulate it too much.

For someone like me who's lived in the same place her whole life - I mean, I lived three blocks from where I was born, and I met my future husband in the eighth grade - there are always family stories and legends passed down.