If dogs talked, one of them would be president by now. Everybody likes dogs.

...at it's best fiction is medicine.

Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.

Out of sight above the house, the mirror moon reflected the sun of a day not yet dawned, shining the pale light of tomorrow on the yard and on the paper birches.

All these girls swooning over hunky vampires, what they really want is to give away their freedom, to be controlled and told what to do and not have to think -- and never die, of course. It's sick is what it is. I don't want to be a forever-young living corpse.

... and she had worn bitterness as though it were a crown.

Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am.