I wished I'd known weeks ago that we didn't have to be chaperoned. I remembered my old daydreams: the prince and I, alone together, cuddling and whispering... I probably would have wised up and brocken the engagement sooner.

We'll have a 'rest of our lives' now.

That porch is a happy-looking place, and my father - burdened, stoop-shouldered, cadaverously thin - doesn't seem to belong on it.

It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.

I like to know what I'm celebrating before I put on a party hat.

When writing isn't going well-then the bad thing about being a writer is that I also have the freedom and flexibility to do something badly, and no one else can fix it for me.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.