Grief is natural,' she said. 'Overcoming it is a matter of choice.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

Don't waste your time on life.

The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.

What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets." (...) "Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.

At night the cries of cats making love or fighting, their caterwauling in the dark, told us that the world was pure emotion, flung back and forth among its creatures, the agony of the one-eyed Siamese no different from that of the Lisbon girls, and even the trees plunged in feeling.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.