Women have been repeating the same mistake since time began: falling for a man’s potential. We rarely see it the same way, and even more rarely care to achieve it.

You can't go forward if you're looking backward. You run into walls that way.

Nuns? They'd take one look at Barrons and decide the devil himself had come knockng. He not only looked dangerous, he emanated something that made even me feel like crossing myself sometimes, and I'm not religious.

I'm here. You're safe now. It's okay to remember. They can never hurt you again.

He kissed like no man she'd ever known. There was something about him, a rawness, an earthy sensuality that bordered on barbaric, something she'd never be able to explain to someone else. A woman had to be kissed by Dageus MacKeltar to fully understand how devastating it was. How it could bring a woman to her knees.

I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.

I realized early in my career that precisely what one reader doesn't like is what another reader loves. Collectively, any writer's audience presents a mishmash of expectations that can never all be met. What one-tenth of my readership may not be crazy about the other nine-tenths savors. The moment you start altering a book or a painting or any type of art as if it's a public collaborative, you crucify its soul. I'd rather irritate a few people and delight a lot than touch no one." ~ Karen Marie Moning