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 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.

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

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

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.

Art makes murder into the supreme image of Beauty and in doing so sets free the vengeful God. (referring to Jean Lorrain's LE VICE ERRANT)

The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.

Once you go outside your natural audience, there are tons of people that don't like you.

Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough! In youth it sheltered me, And I'll protect it now.

The man who will neither play nor do business unless everything is just to his liking and notions, retards rather than contributes to progress.

Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.

Goodbye -- Because I love you.

The winds are nothing else but good or bad spirits. Hark! how the Devil is puffing and blowing.

If you cannot feed one hundred hungry people, then just feed one really well.

For me acting, comes straight from the heart. In that sense I don't act at all. I think that to feel the character's pain I have to be myself. Somewhere audiences see that.