Interest in certain themes doesn't mandate a personal stake or personal experience of those themes. I've killed people in plays, but no one asks me what it's like to kill people.

Personal experience is the basis of all real Literature.

Everyone covering 'Stage Beauty' asks me: 'What's it like to wear a dress?'

I have never indulged our society's misguided notion that my personal life is relevant to my work, so any reporting surrounding that is necessarily hearsay, speculation or fantasy.

I do write a lot from personal experience, but I also embellish a bit.

Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.