Q. When you started out in the advice business 33 years ago, you were a square, Midwestern Jewish girl leading a life without woes. How did you relate to people with problems, and how did you find your voice? It seems to be a mix of liberal politics and conservative morals.
A. And I have learned from them. But I don't believe that you have to be a cow to know what milk is. You don't have to have lived through an immense amount of agony and pain in order to relate to people who are suffering. I really care about what happens to people, and when I first began to read those letters, it was an eye-opener. I came from a very solid Midwestern Jewish home. You see, I led a very sheltered life. I had never seen a man hit his wife. I had never seen any drunkenness. I had never seen any poverty. I knew these things were happening, but they never happened to me. The mail grew me up in a hurry.
Q. You have attributed much of your success to luck. What role does ambition play?
A. I think there's such a thing as serendipity. You have to be lucky. You have to be at the right place at the right time. But once you are lucky, you have to know what to do with your luck. And I knew what to do with my luck.
Q. You are tremendously driven, and I wonder how much of that results from being the twin sister of Dear Abby?
A. Competitiveness is a factor, I'm sure, as with all siblings. But I was the first one to go into this work, and the drive was there from day one.
Q. Do you read most of the letters you receive every day? Do you read 100 at a sitting?
A. Oh, yes. Reading those letters is a very important part of doing the job, because selecting the letters is the lifeblood of that column. If the letters aren't well selected, the column is no good. I must be alone when I read.
Q. When you started out, you hesitated to mention the word sex, but now . . .
A. Hesitated? I printed a letter on homosexuality the first year that I was writing the column, and the publisher in St. Joe, Mich., let us know that he was not running that column. He printed a box on Page One saying there would be no Ann Landers column today because she's dealing with a subject that we feel is not fit for a family newspaper. Of course, everybody in town ran to buy the Detroit Free Press to see what it was that Ann Landers was talking about that the paper wouldn't print.
Q. Your candor cannot endear you to right-wingers.
A. You are right on. They say you can judge a man's value by his enemies. I have an interesting assortment. The National Rifle Association, pro-lifers, the animal-rights people. For years I have fought to abolish Saturday-night specials and those cop-killing bullets that explode on impact. I have taken a strong stand against the church or state telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. We need animal models ((for experiments)), and I've been fighting this battle for years. It gets tougher and tougher. The animal-rights people are powerful and rich.
Q. A wide range of subjects provokes intense feelings among your readers. What is it about toilet paper, for instance, that prompted more than 15,000 letters?