Barry Diller

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.

Being a mother is the best thing that ever happened to me. Before you have your first baby you are a girl and then you become a mother. There is no transition into being a woman; you literally become a mum and being a mum means you always love someone else more than yourself and it is an unexplainable situation.

Many of Judy Blume's books - which I devoured when I was growing up and where I found characters that were believable because they were a lot like me - caused considerable consternation when they were first published, but now they're widely accepted as an essential part of the children's literary canon.