I've been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I've been an editor on magazines.

In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters interesting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

Everybody is a True Believer. Everybody has a little nugget they're convinced of that is the opposite of the nugget on the other side. And they're convinced it's fact.

Knowledge pursued for its own sake - that's the definition of education, as opposed to training.

I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.

Nobody in real life ever takes me seriously.

I don't make my own schedule - it's constructed around my sons' school schedules.

Listen to advice. You don't know how many writer's conferences I've taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field.

People always seemed to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.

If you don't burn the candle at both ends, what's the candle got two ends for?

He loved her, he loved her, and until he'd loved her she had never minded being alone....

If a man WANTS to be with you, he will make his actions clear. There won’t be any questions, murkiness, cloudiness, or fear.

I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.

There are hard choices to be made in balancing the country's security and an individual's liberties. But it is a choice that has to be faced.

Whatever it is, go back and do it again.

I have never come across a technology that doesn't change. This is inevitable. You have to adapt your systems as technology develops.

Every body resisted (the slaughterer) in its own fashion, tried to escape and seemed to argue with the Creator to its last breath.

Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

It's interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that's when many people embraced liberalism.