Don't worry about how pretty (the story) sounds, how lilting it is, and the imagery, and the metaphor, all that. Most readers don't care. It's the people in your book that matter.

I'm the only one who can stop me.. I'm the one who's been sitting at the stoplight all these years, waiting for the light to turn green.

Writing is my shelter. I don't hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth.

If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.

Pay attention to the things that agitate you. It will tell you a lot about yourself.

It's amazing how we can make ourselves believe what we want to.

People like to run their mouths.

Writing is the only place I can be myself and not feel judged.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

As a writer, you get to bring attention to something without preaching. I don't believe in being didactic. So if you dramatize something, you automatically bring attention to it if people read it.

I'm more interested in interpersonal relationships - between lovers families, siblings. That's why I write about how we treat each other.

It's always seemed to me that flirtation is a man's device for avoiding responsibility. He can say whatever he wants and knows he won't be taken seriously.

Cursed greed of gold, what crimes thy tyrant power has caused. -- Virgil

But I am a lover of all kinds of art. And I just can't stick to one thing. I guess I could if I made myself, but I'd always be looking the other way, for other things.

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

Are you the one with the blue eyes?" "Actually, my eyes are usually described as golden...and luminous.

There's a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful.

No-fault guilt: This is when, instead of trying to figure out who's to blame, everyone pays.

Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.

If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose love would follow me still Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

Everything bows to success, even grammar.