Life may not be perfect, at least it offered moments that were perfect enough.

I loved ghost stories, creaky staircases, stormy nights. If it guaranteed nightmares I read it by flashlight, after midnight.

You try as a parent. You love beyond reason. You fight beyond endurance. You hope beyond despair. You never think, until the very last moment, that it still might not be enough.

If you choose to do something, do it with your utmost. And remember, expect nothing and life will be velvet.

The only time you're calm, you're centered, you're at peace, is when someone's trying to kill you. And that's just plain twisted.

I think one of the appeals of suspense is to safely explore our innermost fears.

Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.

It wasn’t that strangers couldn’t hurt you. It was simply that the people you loved could do it so much better.

Women cry. Men laugh. Whiners moan. Men laugh. Wimps complain. Men laugh.

Youth is no excuse for sloppiness.

I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.

One of the conditions necessary for constant success and prosperity is holiness

Anger is a deception. You engage it thinking you'll feel better but ultimately it drills you deeper in the hurt.

A friend isn't someone you use once and then throw away, a friend is someone you use over and over again.

I was born in Glasgow. But my family is pretty much from a little town called Paisley, famous for its cotton mills and paisley pattern.

The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.

I visited Eduardo Miura’s ranch in Seville where he raised bulls for bullfighting, and I was so impressed that by the time I got home I had already selected my future emblem.

Our New England climate is mild and equable compared with that of the Platte.

Fights take a long time to shoot.

The greatest blessing is that, within all of this, I've still been challenged every day to question and show who I am.

Nobody quite knows the truth about cats purring, but it does seem to be also a self-healing thing for them, which is why, when you take your cat to the vet and it's frightened, it will purr.