Harriet Beecher Stowe was thirty-nine when she began Uncle Tom's Cabin. She had given birth to seven children and seen one die. She wrote her book to be serialized in an abolitionist newspaper. Much of it she composed on the kitchen table in between the cooking, mending, tending to her house.

When I'm having trouble I write by hand. There is some connection between the mind and the fingers that draws out words.

Angels come in all sizes and shapes and colors, visible and invisible to the physical eye. But always you are changed from having seen one.

Sometimes writer's block is no more than a signal that you have not done enough research.

It is said that angels come as thoughts, as visions, as dreams, as animals, as the light on the water or in clouds and rainbows, and as people too. Are they walking on this earth as people in disguise? Or do they appear for that one moment and vanish into ether again? Or is it really us, mere humans, who for a moment are picked up by the hand of God and made to speak unwittingly the words another needs to hear, or to hold out a life line to another soul?

I have a lion inside me, and I had to feed it words every few days; when I don't, it begins to eat me instead.

Where do you put your attention? On fear or love? I wish the choice were made just once and not repeated every moment of the day.