A novel is achieved with hard work, the short story with inspiration.

Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.

I'm not willing to sign a contract. They want everything. They want the rights to do the movie and everything else they can think of, forever. There's no limit to the contract. In this universe and universes to be discovered - I'm not making this up - this is in the contract.

We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.

When a man's earning his living doing things he doesn't like, he feels like a slave; when he's doing what he loves, he feels like a prince.

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.

I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans.