The death of my wife: I’d happily have gone first.

A bilious green suit springs to mind.

Nothing. Without my past I wouldn’t be who I am today.

I would have behaved better to my first wife, and the girl I lived with afterwards. I was always away.

Sometimes when I’m on a plane, as I often am, the weather is rough and we’re worried about going down. I think: If I hold the hand of the person next to me, I’ll be holding everyone’s hand. Like my dear friend, the late Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, I want to know: I’m going to the other side of the mountain.

I behaved badly with two old lovers. Years later, when I took one to lunch to apologise, it made it worse.

Being a salesgirl in a baby shop where the others said things like, “He’s Jewish, but she’s American.” Also, after college, being a waitress in London, and trying to make change in the old money of shillings and pence.

In my 30s, I was staring at a pair of expensive boots in a shop window when the photographer Gordon Parks came up behind me. He instantly understood, because he grew up even poorer than me; he made me buy them on my credit card.

Dying just a millisecond before I was about to say something I really wanted the people I love to hear.

I’ve had cancer three times, but never felt close to death except when I walked between parked cars on my street and a car sped past my nose.