Women are constantly underestimated in our power, our reach, our collective pull.

The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.

I'm about to start something new. I'm waiting to be whelmed. The whelming as you start something new is quite something.

Sometimes you meet someone and you know that your life will be different from then on.

One of the reasons I write in different genres is that I get to have the feeling - even fleetingly - that I'm not just writing like Baggott again. I can escape myself.

I'm a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of religion. I look at the past and fear we haven't learned from it. I believe that humanity is capable of evil as well as great acts of courage and goodness. I have hope. Deep down, I believe in the human spirit, although sometimes that belief is shaken.

I believe we're brutes, but then, miraculously, there are those among us who stand up against that brutishness and remind us of the goodness we're capable of.