I was always curious. I wanted to learn a little about a lot of things, and I really had to get pushed to achieve.
As I got older, I started to do it more and more, and I wanted to learn all of the different types. I grew up doing modern, so I wanted to learn ballet, tap, jazz, and African - just everything.
I was a very curious person because of my parents. They encouraged me to be as curious about as many things as I wanted.
I grew up in a little town with about 6,000 or 7,000 people. I always knew from 11 or 12 years old that I wanted to be a writer, and I always wanted to write about growing up in a place like that that's small and you don't fit into.
One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world.
Growing up, I always wanted to always be something new. I thought if I was an actress, I would have a chance at doing it all. What's incredible about this profession is every role you play; you learn a different skill set. That really appealed to me.
You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.
I grew up with my grandfather, so I knew him really, really well. He was funny and opinionated and wonderful. He was fascinated by things and always curious.
At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.
I grew up being very different and being ready to fight people. I wanted to stand up for myself, and I wanted to not let anyone think they know me based on appearances, so I was always just fighting back with people.
I don't know whether I have ideas all the time. I think I'm curious about things all the time; I think I'm always curious, and I think I'm always interested in whatever passes by, and I know I tend to think about things, and I tend to talk about things, and sometimes that takes root and gives me something to chase.
There's nothing like young children's energy... They are always curious, and enthusiastic about many different things.
I remember travelling up and down the road, and I kept journals during my whole career, and I was always making notes about things I wanted to say, words I wanted to create, actions I wanted to do, things I wanted to do to make the character more imaginative and fantastical.
I thought everything was interesting. I wanted to go scuba diving and I wanted to learn how to surf. Because I grew up in the 60s girls were not allowed to do anything. As I've gotten older and realized that women can do things like that I thought, 'Why not? Now's the time.'
I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer, which I turned out to be. But I was always curious about other things too, and what if I got interested in history or the law?
I always liked acting in school and drama classes, but when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always told them I wanted to be a singer. I didn't want to be a jack of all trades. I wanted to master one.