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.

When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.

I certainly understand very much what it's (like when) an expense comes up and you're trying to figure out how to pay for it.

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.

Writing is storytelling. No matter how you slice it, you're saying, 'Once upon a time.' That's what writing is all about.

The truth is I hate cocktail parties when the only person I know is my supposed date, and he abandons me the minute we come in the door.

I am a natural optimist but there were times when (it seemed like) I was doing nothing but adding up on the back of envelope what I had to pay this month.