I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters.

Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

If you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either.

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

Anyone know any long-term couples living three time zones apart?

Your face needs to have character if you're an actor - otherwise you're just a face.

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.

We don't like to think of ourselves as subject to the forces of the world, we like to think of ourselves as exerting that force.

I've always found life quite difficult to explain to people or to myself.

Governments resort to inflation with popular support because the people apparently are naïve enough to believe that they can have their cake and eat it, too.

It's never too early for a cocktail.

Every new thing is a result of everything you wrote before.

Hope is not defined by the absence of hardship. Rather, hope is found in God’s grace in the midst of hardship. Hope is found in his promise to give us a future.

I'm not a singer. I'm a musician, which is different.