I tend to avoid melodrama. I try to create very realistic settings and very realistic experiences and realistic responses to these experiences. Melodrama is the use of really big events that may or may not happen in real life - certainly they do, but they're not events that are common to most people. Most of the things that happen in my novels are things that could happen to people in real life.

That's my sweetheart in there. I'm not living her. This is my home now. Your mother is my home.

You and I were different. We came from different worlds, and yet you were the one how taught me the value of love. You showed me what it was like to care for another, and I am a better man because of it. I don't want you to ever forget that.

I can’t make this decision for you…this one’s yours. I want you to know, though, that I love you. And I always will. I know that doesn’t help, but it’s all I can do.

Katie smiled and turned away, knowing it wasn't an illusion or a figment of her imagination. She knew what she saw. She knew what she believed.

Hardships drive some people apart. Others, like us, grow even closer.

If hers are the stars in the nighttime sky, mine are the haunted empty spaces in between.