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.

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.

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.

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

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?

My daughter is my passion and my life.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

Confidence is not 'they will like me'. Confidence instead is 'I'll be fine if they don't'.

When women do better, economies do better.

As a customer service representative; it is hard to deal with people who has an attitude when I pick up the phone.

I now understand what Christ suffered in Gethsemane as well as any man living.

(Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart.

Being a sci-fi geek, it was just lovely to be on a show where I pretend I'm in outer space. That's always been my dream: to pretend to be out in space or actually be out in space.

Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.

Internal and external nature, mind and matter, are in time and space, and are bound by the law of causation.