She did know that the journey to happiness was laborious and strewn with seeds of suffering. She guessed that it was probably a place each person had to seek for herself, that each heart had to find on its own.

I wrote the book Don't Die, My Love as I was going through radiation, so it certainly has an air of authenticity about it because I was there. I think all of my books took on kind of a deeper tone when the lady who wrote about cancer all of a sudden had cancer. I'm doing well. I went through it all and they said, 'You're fine."

I like to tell young people - you know one in four children die by their own hands - no matter how bad things seem, just wait a day, wait a week. Life will turn around.

On TV, stories and events are finalized in 30 or 60 minutes, or neatly tied up after a season or two. The best stories are the ones that force us to come to our own conclusions and to explain why we believe in our conclusions.

I wanted to write about the third world and had the opportunity to go live in the trenches, so to speak.

From every ending comes a new beginning.

I am very privileged and honored when someone chooses to read a book, especially a book of mine.