To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.

Honestly, when you start talking about genres, you're talking as much about the business side of writing as anything else. Certainly there are elements of reader expectation that play into various genres, and those are important, but it also becomes about packaging, placement, audience....In the end, I'm not a fan of labels. I think the best fiction blurs the boundaries between genres, stretches and breaks them.

When you're a mom, you learn about fear. You're always afraid. Always. About everything from cupboard doors to kidnappers to weather.

I prefer to scare myself in the ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartener on a school bus? Now, that's real terror.

A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones.

Marriages go through hard times. Sometimes you have to get in there and fight for your love. That's the only way for it to get better.

We can't live other people's lives for them. Even if we love them.