Alexia gave in to his demanding touch, but only, of course, because he sounded so pathetic. It had nothing, whatsoever to do with her own quickening heartbeat.

Steampunk is...the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama

It's no good choosing your first husband from a school for evil geniuses. Much too difficult to kill.

No one ever explained the octopuses.

I am rather fond of ladybugs. They are so delightfully hemispherical.

I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.

How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.

The ill-informed masses included her own family among their ranks, a family that specialized in being both inconvenient and asinine.

Alexia figured, delightedly, that this meant he did, in fact, tend to traipse around his private apartments in the altogether. Marriage was becoming more and more of an attractive prospect.

Conall,” “Aye, Alexia?” He looked up at her. Was that fear in his caramel eyes? “I am going to take advantage of you,” she said

She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory.

she said, these dead petals, honey, brought me here

He couldn't get into Harvard even if he had the dean's wife at gunpoint.

It took me years to eat a lot of shellfish. I was probably 20 years old before I had even seen a shrimp cocktail. I like oysters, but fried.

How can you succeed by helping others succeed? We succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed.

Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.

It's not what I expected," he said. "They're far more organized than our intelligence had led us to believe.

Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.

The librarian, the warrior, the free spirit... archetypes are a great jumping off point to help clarify where we want to go with a character.

If I can muster up any allure in my life, at this stage, I wouldn't mind doing that.

When times are bad, the gloves come off and employers are less nice. People become disposable.