It's always been hard to call myself a writer. I think a part of me still thinks it's too good to be true.

It was amazing how you could get so far from where you'd planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.

I think having a good agent is key. I've been with mine for ten years now, and she's very honest with me. There are a lot of times I've sent her books that were not so good because I was tired of writing, or panicked about money, and she's told me flat out, "You don't want this to be your next book. Trust me."

Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.

This was always the problem with my mother and me, I suddenly realized. There were so many things we thought we agreed on, but anythign can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls.