I don't think [Fifty Shades of Grey is] a model for anything. Except maybe in bed.

The best person to write for is yourself—and what better place to start than in a journal.

I think you can only be truly mad at someone you really love.

It's the fantasy of first love. If you've been married for 400 years, as I have, it's nice to experience first love again and you can vicariously through a book. And it is such a fantasy. It takes you away from doing the dishes and the laundry. I think of this as a contemporary romance rather than erotic fiction.

It's very hard to grow up in a perfect family when you're not perfect.

The candle flame is too hot. It flickers and dances in the over-warm breeze, a breeze that brings no respite from the heat. Soft gossamer wings flutter to and fro in the dark, sprinkling dusty scaled in the circle of light. I'm struggling to resist, but I'm drawn. And then it's to bright, and I am flying too close to the sun, dazzled by the light, fried and melting from the heat, weary in my endeavers to stay airborn. I am so warm. The heat... It's stiffling, overpowering. It wakes me.

So you've just slept with him, given him your virginity, a man who doesn't love you. In fact, he has odd ideas about you, wants to make you some sort of kinky sex slave.