live your life as if you may lose everything.

The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite. My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it's icy, and I'm in bare feet.

When a scientist's son or daughter becomes a scientist they'll say "Wonderful! Wonderful!" So, why, in the name of God, would a mother be jealous to see her daughter become a successful writer?

Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things.

As a writer, you paint strokes and leave suggestions so readers can create their own pictures. That allows you to know someone by a small action and it saves countless pages of explanation.

Approach your lives as if they were novels, with their own heroes, villains, red herrings, and triumphs.

It's funny how, even long after you've accepted the grief of losing someone you love and truly have gotten on with your life, every once in a while something comes up that plays "gotcha," and for a moment or two the scar tissue separates and the wound is raw again.