Never look at other people's bad fortune,' my mother said. 'If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner.

Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life

We had to survive to remember. Otherwise everything we were would disappear. Those people we loved would fade as though we'd never loved them, as if they'd never walked and talked and burned, forgetting them was the real evil. That was the hole of darkness.

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them

She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.