how magnanimous was a gesture if one were constantly aware of its magnanimity?

I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim. I like musicales in general. They make surprisingly great running tapes.

She might not be as strong as everyone she met, or as fast, or even as smart. But she could bullshit with the best of them. Combine that quality with a license to carry, and a girl could more than get by in this life.

I'm a morning person, which is a hideous thing to be. No one likes morning people, not even other morning people.

It must be nice to be so strong and to think it's because you're so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a thing as luck, and there's more bad luck than good in this world.

I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not.

In fact, I think every book I've written has been inspired by a real event.