Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.

The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of.

That's something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

I do believe that when we're in the process of dying, that all these emergency circuits in the brain take over. I base what I'm saying not on any empirical evidence. I think it's very possible that when you're dying, these circuits open up, which would explain this whole white-light phenomena - when people clinically die and they see their relatives and stuff and say, "Hello, it's great to see you."

If you're going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

Nora Roberts is cool.

The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.