I wanted to show what it's really like for 98 percent of the world's population [in the third world]. Plus, I also see there are an awful lot of young people out there doing good things, and I wanted to give them a platform.

For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms.

What really grabs me is when a reader writes to express her personal story and how a book helped her situation, or her acceptance of a situation she can't change. I read some sad cases in my snail and electronic mail. I respond to all I can, affirming that they are the true heroes of life because they are fighting through adversity and surviving.

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."

Sisters are made by living everyday with each other and wearing each other down until the rough spots are smooth. They're made by sharing secrets you'd never tell mom, and out of doing things for each other just because you feel like it, not because you have to. I guess you could say sisters are 'grown,' not manufactured, in a very special place called a family.

You know not every book has to have a happy ending, but it has to have a satisfying ending.

I created a character whose motives were pure and good and she was going to go out and save the whole world. But the truth is, you can't save the whole world, but you can save one. And that was the whole thrust of the novel - to save just one.