MEN, Charlene said. Leave that to you! Willa quipped.

When I do things I shouldn't do, my mother says I need a new pair of glasses -- that I should be be looking differently at the choices I make.

True love isn't reserved for weddings and ceremonies. It's from the heart. That's all it has to be. All it ever is.

I'm still only half the writer I hope I will be.

Especially with four insanely angry, sword-carrying pirates bearing down on you, followed closely by an alien with a genetic malfunction that posed like Elvis Presley and looked slightly like a cross between a koala and a cuddly dog.

As a young boy, I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely, but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer, where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

I've been running from, and toward, death all my life, more aware of it than a person should be.