I still do have the little lunch bag that my mother made out of a towel and embroidered with my name on it for when I went to kindergarten.

It is impossible to know what fate will bring. If you love to write or paint, you will keep on writing or painting, and things will either work out or not, and you just have to keep being in the process.

My mother was the influence on me - my father was absent. He was a diamond dealer; he was doing wonderful things in the background, and women were left at home. So my mother really was in charge of everything: the ballet, dance lessons, piano lessons, and latkes.

I said to myself, how could anyone not have illustrated this before?

The Elements of Style.

I started looking at it, ... and I thought, 'Oh my God, this is like Gertrude Stein wrote this book.' It's so funny and so eccentric. The imagery was so clear that I knew immediately that I was going to illustrate it.