People can't help the way they feel, only what they do about it. They can no longer not be attracted to someone other than their spouse than they can say they are not hungry or not thirsty or not frightened or embarrassed. It's when you act on that attraction when you know it would be bad for your marriage that is the problem. In a good marriage, the couple are each as committed to the marriage as they are to each other.

One way to tell if you're really comfortable with a person is if you can be quiet together sometimes and not feel awkward. If you don't feel obligated to say something brilliant or funny or surprising or cool. You can just be together. You can just be.

The first draft is just a skeleton-just bare bones. It's like the very first rehearsal of a play, where the director moves the actors around mechanically to get a feel of the action.

It's what they say to do when you're depressed, you know. Walk in someone else's shoes for a while, and your own won't feel so tight.

I also know that you can lie not only by what you say but what you don't say.

Happiness is wanting what you have.

Once I have the idea for a story. I start collecting all kinds of helpful information and storing it in three-ring notebooks. For example, I may see a picture of a man in a magazine and say, 'That's exactly what the father in my book looks like!'...I save everything that will help--maps, articles, hand-jotted notes, bits of dialogue from conversations that I overhear.