You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.

Fear is a hammer, and when the people are beaten finally to the conviction that their existence hangs by a frayed thread, they will be led where they need to go.

Hunches [are] just messages from the subconscious, which [is] thinking furiously all the time and processing information we have not consciously noted.

Creating a family in this turbulent world is an act of faith, a wager that against all odds there will be a future, that love can last, that the heart can triumph against all adversities and even against the grinding wheel of time.

I've had good publishers and bad publishers, and you've got to learn when the advice is sensible and when it's not.

I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.

The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know.