Hurt's a reason to change, but all the hurt in the world don't change facts.

Good days and long nights to ya, sai.

where the world ends is where you must begin

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.

As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.

In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.

I like to end stories where the readers have a little room to run. They can resolve things as they like in their own mind.