What I have yet to see is a real woman choose a younger man because he spent six hours a day at the gym trying to sculpt his abs.

Women with money and women in power are two uncomfortable ideas in our society.

You need characters who want things. They want love, they want recognition, they want happiness.

Even as a kid, I never liked breakfast. I just don't like to eat then. I like to get up and work. I think sticking a whole bunch of carbohydrates in your stomach in the morning is probably the worst way to begin the day.

Growing up, nobody I knew even knew a writer. So it was a big adventure and something that I've wrestled with my whole life. I think it's a journey worth taking, really finding out who you are and what you do well.

I first arrived in New York in 1979. I was 19 and I was going to University in Houston, Texas, and I decided that I knew what I wanted to do and it was time to go and do it. I literally ran away from college.

I started working for the 'NY Observer' when I was 33. After I had been writing for them for about a year and a half the editor said, 'Your stories are the most talked about stories in the 'Observer'; you should have your own column.'

I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: 'This is how the world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.'

I was a freelancer all through my twenties. I did about one story a month and I wanted to write fiction, so the stories that I would do were precursors to 'Sex and the City.'

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.

I wish I was one of those persnickety types who buys guidebooks and studies them, but I don't have the inclination or time. I'm more of a 'get on the plane, arrive at the destination and see what happens' kind of traveler.

I'm the kind of person who would have liked to have lived at the Plaza. I love crystal chandeliers and gold leaf, velvets and mirrors, Oriental rugs and marble.

I've always been fascinated by young women who come to New York. The characters in 'Lipstick Jungle' were once young women who came to New York and we see their early experiences through flashbacks.

I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

If I'm with a man, is that going to prevent me from achieving my goal? What sacrifices will I have to make in terms of being myself, if I'm with a man? Something that young women find out really quickly is that when you start dating, all of a sudden you're supposed to have a role. You're not allowed to just be yourself.

It's a job. When I'm writing I'm going to do it five to six days a week and I'm going to work for four to six hours a day. There's no magic writing fairy. It's just hard work.

Like it or not, in the end, it's one's body. It's literally what carries you through life. There's a reason for the saying, 'If you have your health, you have everything,' and it's true. Old age, disease - these are the great equalizers.

The fact that a man is open to being with an older woman suggests that he doesn't give a hang what other people think of him. More likely, he's confident, open-minded and willing to make his own rules.

The joke that I make is that there are instances on the TV series that happen to me, - except on Sex and the City they always make it better or worse than real life and I am actually saying that in a joking way.

The reality about being economically dependent on someone else usually doesn't work out for women in the end. It's about being an adult and being responsible for your life. Most women have to work, so let's just get on with it.