I don't base my books on my life (thank goodness) and I don't pick the topic first. In fact, the topic picks me - via a question I can't answer as a mom, a wife, a woman, an American. I find myself wondering "What if..." and it blossoms into a whole novel.

I haven't run out of ideas yet. Usually while I'm working on a book, I'm doing research for the next one!

It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what you don't care about.

I don't know the first thing about holding together a family, especially one that resembles an heirloom vase, shattered but glued back together for its beauty, and no one mentions that you can see the cracks as plain as day.

Can you hate someone for what they have done, but still love them for whom they had been?

You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.

There was a difference between people looking at you because they wanted to be like you, and people looking at you because your misfortune brought them one rung higher.