I could hardly get a boy to look at me. All right, they'd look, they'd even take me out, but no one asked for a second date. I was too nasty, a real wise guy, and all the boys could tell what my rotten disposition was. Deep down, I wanted a commitment with a capital C. To get anywhere with me, a boy would have to sign his undying loyalty with his own blood.

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are

He has the ability to catch someone by the way that he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking.

That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.

I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.

He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.