In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.

She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.

There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, 'You must read this.' I've always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.

I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don't postpone your dreams.

In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.

Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted