If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.

All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.

When you love someone you let them take care of you.

Read a ton. Take a workshop course so you learn to give and get criticism.

In Poland, for a while, my books all had cartoons on the cover. I trust my publishers in each country to know what works in their individual markets.

That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one

when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw