I carry around a little stool to stand on when people want a picture with their cellular phones.

Be careful what you ask of Heaven; it might be granted.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.

Friendship is all about trust and sharing. Passionate and romantic love is all about sex and emotions. You have to try to combine those, I think. The great marriages, the great couples I know, have both.

What is truer than truth? Answer: the story.

No complaining about how hard it is to write, we are all so, so lucky to write, to sit down, inside, and write words on paper. There is no greater freedom, no greater good, nothing that brings more joy.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.