People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say,'

There's all kinds of love in the world, and not all of it looks like the stuff in greeting cards.

I struggle with the fact that men's popular fiction is talked about differently. Books like mine don't get as many reviews and probably won't win any prizes, but they entertain the pants off of hundreds of thousands of women.

I remember things like that...A lifetimes accredidation of unkindness, all of those little longering hurts that I carried around like stones sewn into my pockets.

Writing let me escape... It let me escape the insistent tug of my family, and its ongoing misery. Sitting in front of the computer, with the screen blank and the cursor blinking, was the best escape I knew. And there was plenty to escape from.

I have these "pinch me" moments when I realize I got to be the thing I wanted to be growing up. I'm right where I belong.

She hated the implied familiarity when customers requested things from her by name.