A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.

Love is a luxury. It's something that people are allowed to indulge in when they're not simply trying to survive and keep other people alive.

If you look at the world one way, it takes from you - it's a thief of time, energy, creative mojo. But if you look at the world another way, it gives you an endless supply of motivation.

Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth.

The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.

Red Sox fans have been pushed to the brink over the years, but that's how faith grows stronger.

I prefer a cluttered workspace.

I want women writers to write boldly, wildly, deeply. I want them to feel really liberated to tell the brutal truth, however they see that truth and are moved to tell it.

The poem has to bear the weight with image, language... the screenplay with dialogue, plot.

I try not to divide plot and character. I get to know a character by what they want and fear and how those internal forces play out in their lives.

Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.

..a disability is something within you. A prejudice is something within theemployer...don’t look at yourself through their eyes. Look at yourself through your own eyes.

It is difficult to live in the present ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.

Quality … has to do with intention.

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.

People are always spewing this horseshit about how age doesn't matter. Well, it does matter! I'm thirty-five, and I'm happy to be thirty-five. I can't pretend I'm still a snot-nosed 21-year-old.

Counseling has to do with intuition, with work on oneself, with the quietness of one's mind and the openness of one's heart.

Above all, I will keep an open heart. As I move on the right path I will recieve great happiness as a reward without asking for anything in return.

Compelling a woman to wear a headscarf is against Islam, and compelling her to remove it is against human rights.