I'm an escapist kind of writer.

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.

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.

I have always believed that life is too short for rows and disagreements. Even if I think I'm right, I would prefer to apologize and remain friends rather than win and be an enemy.

Different views are essential for progress

when you forgive people, events and circumstances, you are in the process of change, which leads you towards dominant universal emotion called love.

When life is at that extremely hard time, all we can control is our attitude.

The more survival skills an individual has that have been practiced physically and otherwise, the better odds they have for those skills coming to the forefront during a stressful emergency.

I don't want people to chop off the citizens' or anybody's heads in the Middle East, OK? Because they're Christian or Muslim or anything else.

The revolution is like a vessel filled with the pulsating heartbeat of millions of working people.

I started to write a lot of ballads that were sultry and had a Norah Jones-for-country kind of feel. I wanted to bring elements of old soul music and old country music.

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

In many things it is not well to say, "Know thyself"; it is better to say, "Know others."

Don't change for anyone. The people that matter don't care, and the people that care don't matter.