Our house was awash in books, and my mother doled out her favorites like they were special treats - which they were.

The truth is rarely as dreadful or as terrifying as what one imagines.

For me, a good YA novel is the best kind of comfort food.

I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

Write what you care about, what interests and intrigues you.

The book that made a lasting impression was the one my mother gave each of us when she decided we were ready for our first "adult novel," Lucy Maud Montgomery's The Blue Castle.

A man notices a womans figure when she walks in a room. Women have eight million words for blue; a man says dark blue or light blue.

Phoebe Wolkind Ephron cracked wise like Dorothy Parker and looked like Katharine Hepburn.

Outlining is like putting on training wheels. It gives me the courage to write, but we always go off the outline.

My rule of writing is that no one can do what you can do, so jealousy or competitiveness are pointless. I am always happy when one of my sisters has a book published that I get to read.

Never allow any bitterness to take root in your heart.

Be educated. Only true education and wisdom can lighten the burdens of your life and fill it with joy and happiness.

followers have a very clear picture of what they want and need from the most influential leaders in their lives: trust, compassion, stability, and hope

What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant...

happy is the nation without a history

As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a [person].

The science of anti-Semitism has as its object Judaism as a social problem, being thus, necessarily, the synthesis of all sciences that can contribute to its solution.

What keeps me up at night is poverty and unemployment.

It's an immense amount of pressure, celebrity itself.

Local and regional food systems are about opportunity.