Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat.

I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young.

I do tend to be almost kind of Pollyanna-ish person.

I do a lot of mental work before I ever start writing.

I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.

Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live." Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort...reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung.

Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.