Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.

I know it's hard being a single mother baby, he said, but we're talking fundamentals here. Homemade cookies are one of the best parts of christmas. It's an absolute fundamental.

While I like people, I do also like being alone in a room and seeing what you can do with a particular theme or subject.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

A silent dark...as black as a moonless lake, as a ravine's wings, darkness there and nothing more, merely this and nothing more.

Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.

He once told me that an August evening was "as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart," a comparison that left me blinking two days later.