We thank you [the soldiers recently returned from the middle east] for your service.

She gave him such a look... Man oh man, if looks could kill. That one might have totalled a city block.

Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth breather there is.

There was a price to be paid for being interested in fiction and in writing, pushing my family away. Books and authors became my family.

I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy.

I write for a radio show that, no matter what, will go on the air Saturday at five o'clock central time. You learn to write toward that deadline, to let the adrenaline pick you up on Friday morning and carry you through, to cook up a monologue about Lake Wobegon and get to the theater on time.

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.