My mother had always taught me to write about my feelings instead of sharing really personal things with others, so I spent many evenings writing in my diary, eating everything in the kitchen and waiting for Mr. Wrong to call.

Imagine my surprise when, after a lifetime of teaching me to keep personal things to myself, Mom insisted my drawings were the start of a comic strip for millions of people to enjoy.

My wife is cool enough to let me write about personal things, to be a songwriter exploring the shadowy sides of love.

Cathy was the first widely syndicated humor strip created by a woman. The strip was pretty revolutionary at the time not only because it starred a female, but also because it was so emotionally honest about all the conflicting feelings many women had in 1976.

Queen songs tend to be about very personal things: personal dreams and personal ambitions.

I've been writing poems since I was in the Navy - to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.