Our imaginations are strong as children. Sometimes they get shoved aside, these imaginations. They get dusty and mildewed with age. The imagination is a muscle that has to be put to use or it shrivels.

Our love is our burden.

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

Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.

She glances back before stepping into the alley, and she catches her grandfather looking at her the way he does sometimes--as if she's already gone, as if he's practicing sorrow.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

If men are paid/praised more than women for the same work than it always pays to allow the man to have more freedom to pour himself into his work - think of athletes, actors over the age of 28, lawyers, accountants, college deans.