I was 12 when my parents told me we were moving to Lebanon. I remember thinking, 'Leba-who?' I had absolutely no concept of the place.

I remember being described often as 'the horrifically ugly Jack McCall,' and I kept thinking it took me about 10 seconds to get like that.

I remember, I used to get off a bus, and if there was someone sitting in the station, I remember thinking maybe they were from Shin Bet and came for me.

I struggled with depression when I was in high school, and I remember thinking that if I got a record deal and got a hit song, that it would solve all those problems for me.

I can remember, when I was in college, irritating deeply somebody I was going out with, because he would ask me what I was thinking and I would say I was thinking nothing. And it was true.

I went to a predominantly white school, and I was the only black girl. I can remember thinking, 'I don't want to be as dark as I am - I want to be a little fairer.' I didn't want to be me.

I remember thinking this is everything that England means to me. The huge, flat landscapes with deep reds and greens. Daunting and terrifying and incredible. We should see it more on film, I think.

I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't.

When I was pregnant, a few of my friends told me that their babies slept in bed with them. I remember thinking how crazy that was. Then I started reading up on it and decided it was something I actually wanted to try.

But I will say that Harve Presnell... he was one of those guys who, when you're standing in a room with him... he's such an older masculine force that I remember thinking, 'Wow, his voice makes me sound like Pee-Wee Herman.'

I think I was maybe a ned. I don't know. I had a trakkie, a cap and got into trouble when I was younger and I don't remember other neds round about me, so I suppose I must have been one. But a thinking ned, an intelligent ned.

I remember passing through New York in college and thinking, 'I'm going to come back here.' The energy just made me think of Europe - everyone walking, seeing the delis and flowers outside. It just felt very familiar. I loved it right away.

My parents and grandparents listened to bacheta heavy, the true bachata from back in the day - Juan Luis Guerra, Anthony Santos. I liked the genre, but I remember thinking, 'OK, enough of this.' I would sing Usher's 'U Remind Me' to the girls in school.

What I want to do is to create a conversation piece and something people remember. I want to make it repetitive enough but not use what I call 'thin thinking' - the kind of thing anyone can do. A hook tells me what you are talking about and it doesn't have to be a lot of words.

I don't know what my mother was thinking, but she entered me in a Little Miss contest - Little Miss Orange Blossom, I think it was. And I don't remember anything about that, except I have one flash-bulb memory of standing on the stage and thinking, 'This is not where I should be.'

I remember when I was in 'Hairspray' - my first Broadway show - I truly was in awe of the voices I got to hear on a nightly basis around me. I'm thinking, 'Wow! Why aren't these people selling millions of records?' They're the ones that are out there, you know, belting their faces off!

I remember when Lindbergh arrived in Paris, I was one of the first persons to know about his landing, because as the French people know that I was born in St. Louis, thinking I would be very proud to announce it to the public, they gave me the news first. I was then starring in the 'Folies Bergere.'

I've always loved doing research. I remember doing a research project on the Babylonian numeral system in the eighth grade and thinking, 'This is pretty awesome - is this really a job you can have?' This led me toward a career as an academic, although it took me until college to realise that economics was the right field.

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