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

I like to see writers reach bigger and bigger audiences, and stand-alones have allowed some of them to do just that.

There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions.

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

it's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.

The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and everything that had ever been.

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.