I think the 'New York Times' reviews overall tend to overlook popular fiction, whether you're a man, woman, white, black, purple or pink. I think there are a lot of readers who would like to see reviews that belong in the range of commercial fiction rather than making the blanket assumption that all commercial fiction is unworthy.

Chicken,' Josie said. 'Have you ever been in love?' Peter looked at Josie, and thought of how they had once tied a note with their addresses to a helium balloon and let it go in her backyard, certain it would reach Mars. Instead, they had received a letter from a widow who lived two blocks away. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I think so.

If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.

The book that made me want to be a writer in the first place was Gone with the Wind - I read it and wanted to create a whole world out of words, too.

It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a moment, I'd been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you've seen that, how can you go back where you came from?

You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever

It was no coincidence, that fear could move a person to extremes, just as seamlessly as love. They were the conjoined twins of emotion: If you didn't know what was at stake to lose, you had nothing to fight for.