All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

Parents have railed against shelters near schools, but no one has made any connection between the crazed consumerism of our kids and their elders' cold unconcern toward others. Maybe the homeless are not the only ones who need to spend time in these places to thaw out.

A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

I would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat.

I never think about issues when I'm working on a novel. Issues are things that happen to people in sufficient numbers to elicit widespread attention; in other words, they're just life happening. That's what I think about: life, and telling a story.

If an opportunity scares you, that's God's way of saying you should jump at it.