The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.

Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

The concern of your brain is not to see the actual nature of reality, but to represent the reality to you in such a way that suits your needs.

Poverty is a result of poor choices not of poor luck

Be careful mi amor, don't hurt anyone this time." Cordia reminded Jade.

By associating with good and evil persons a man acquires the virtues and vices which they possess even as the wind blowing over different places takes along good and bad odors.

Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

You must find the ideas that have some promise in them... It is not enough to just have ideas.

I think enough cannot be said for what you can discover through literature. So I think that was probably my most valued characteristic as a teenager.

Today we live in a cash-for-trash world. Anyone can stand up and say anything unkind, unfair or completely untrue about you, and then they are rewarded financially for it ... because life is unfair.

Mystery is the basic element of all works of art.

The true practice to meditation is to sit as if you where drinking water when you are thirsty.