I want my handbags and my shoes to be stylish but I want to make sure that they're versatile. I travel and I have to make sure the pieces I put into my bag can go with a dress or with shorts or jeans.

I've been involved with sports my whole life, which made clothes and makeup and handbags not that important as a kid. I just didn't care.

I treat my writing like a day job, like my main job, even if for many years I was doing other jobs to pay the bills. I worked as a copy editor. I was a medical guinea pig. I was an eBay power seller of ladies' handbags. I was an assistant to a bookie at the horse races. I bartended. I did anything I could to make ends meet.

Linguistics is a good way of defining the culture of a brand. The vocabulary used by sports and lifestyle brands - running, fitness, training, motorsports - is all about functionality, whereas the vocabulary of the luxury business - handbags, ready-to-wear - is all about the product.

I don't diet, I don't do fads, I've just decided to not eat carbs. So no more bread and pasta for the month. I can't live without chocolate, though. I've always got a bar in my handbag. It has to be 72%. Any less and it's too sweet, any more and it's inedible. Like I said, I'm very particular.

I haven't been brought down because people are focused on who I'm dating, what I'm eating, or what handbag is the best handbag - that's so cheap to me. But if others want to open up about their personal lives, that is their choice. It's not for me to judge.

Have you noticed that almost all the change in the world goes to women? When was the last time you had a five pence piece? Exactly. In a Christmas pudding. All the rest of it is in women's handbags.

We're in the business of selling pleasure. We don't sell handbags or haute couture. We sell dreams.

You can climb out of your designer bag now. I've never actually seen someone try to fit inside a handbag. You gave it a good go. Let me try.

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked.

I want my handbags and my shoes to be stylish but I want to make sure that they're versatile. I travel and I have to make sure the pieces I put into my bag can go with a dress or with shorts or jeans.

I've been involved with sports my whole life which made clothes and makeup and handbags not that important as a kid. I just didn't care.

I'm going to get up every morning at 6:30 to work out. Then when I've kept with it all week I give myself something I really want like a new handbag or a piece of jewelry I'm coveting.

I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV I didn't want to be famous I didn't want to be anyone in particular I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags or go out with cute guys from shows or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.

I don't diet I don't do fads I've just decided to not eat carbs. So no more bread and pasta for the month. I can't live without chocolate though. I've always got a bar in my handbag. It has to be 72%. Any less and it's too sweet any more and it's inedible. Like I said I'm very particular.

I want to speak up and tell you that mascara and clothes don't make you cool neither do name-brand handbags but being a leader can.