I've heard some readers saying they wished the story was longer, and I completely understand that desire - we all like to sink into a nice, long novel.

Accept criticism. If you do not offer your work for criticism and accept that criticism, meaning give it serious thought and attention, then you will never improve.

What writers do - everything comes from inside, from experiences of the world that we have digested. And then we turn it into silk, or stories.

If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.

I think part of my purpose in this life is to talk about magic, and to make it.

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me.

The appeal of writing a romance was that I'd never written one before the The Thorn and The Blossom.

I loved writing something I'd never written before, and I wanted to write not just about "true love" but also a human relationship.

I actually pushed the boundaries on how long a book like this [The Thorn and the Blossom] can be. The original plan called for two 7,500 word stories, and I turned in two 10,000 word stories.

It's appropriate to have magic in a love story, because magic is a sort of metaphor for what love feels like? When we fall in love, the world feels magical to us. It becomes an enchanted place.

I see so many talented writers who have difficulties with that. And if you don't believe it's important, you won't put in the work you need to.

When I started to focus on all the beauty all around me, my whole world became amazingly beautiful.

Even today with the public's growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.

I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me.

My trouble was I had a mind but I couldn't make it up!

a woman of the world should always be the mistress of sorrow and not its servant. She may have a grief but never a grievance.

Don't put a lump of rock under my elbow again!

Jack Sprat could eat no fat,His wife could eat no lean. A real sweet pair of neurotics.

The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct ratio to the swiftness of our passage.

Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.

Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.