It's helpful for me to get ideas - the physical action of painting. Sometimes it frees up your writer brain. It's nice for me now that the writing has become a serious career that painting can become more like a hobby.

Better to have a single perfect diamond than a sack of flawed stones.

We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.

The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.

If she were gone I would be nothing. You should think better of yourself than to settle for that.

So proper for a circus girl," Mme. Padva says with with a gleam in her eye. "We shall have to loosen those corset laces if we intend to keep you an intimate dinner company." "I expected the corset unlacing would take place after dinner," Celia says mildly, earning a chorus of laughter. "We shall keep Miss Bowen as intimate company regardless of the state of her corset," Chandresh says. "Make a note of that," he adds, waving a hand at Marco. "Miss Bowen's corset is duly noted, sir," Marco replies, and the laghter bubbles over the table again.

It's not a real name," she says. "Not one that he's carried with him always. It's one he wears like his hat. So he can take it off if he wants.