Dying is not easy. It's a very hard transition.

I have a very acute sense of place and time, so all of my stories are rooted in a place and a time.

For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men.

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

I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012. And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark; there's no redemption there.

When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it's full of mistakes and repetitions. It's good to avoid that in literature, but still, a story should feel like a conversation. It's not a lecture.

A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone - a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity - and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes.