Hardy was every loose-limbed cowboy in warn denim, every pair of blue eyes, every battered pickup, every hot cloudless day." -Liberty

I love you dammit.""she brushed her lips teasingly against his."How much?" He made a slight sound, as if the soft kiss had affected him intensely."Without limit.Beyond forever.

One of the servants had reported that Daisy had been sneaking around the house at night, deliberately tripping all the traps to keep the mice from being killed. “Is this true, daughter?” Thomas Bowman had rumbled, his gaze filled with ire as he stared at Daisy. “It could be,” she had allowed. “But there is another explanation.” “And what is that?” Bowman had asked sourly. Her tone turned congratulatory. “I think we are hosting the most intelligent mice in New York!

Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.

She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn’t know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief.

You know," I told him on our wedding night, "I'm just as much me when I'm with you, as I am without you." And because Hardy understood what I meant, he pulled me into his arms, against his heart.

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.