The spirit of Jane Eyre looms over Once Upon a Day. Lisa Tucker keeps the plot of this gothic novel bubbling with tons of juicy family secrets.

All stories teach us something, and promise us something, whether they're true or invented, legend or fact.

You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.

I don't like coming home. It keeps me from being nostalgic, which by nature I am. Even before the plane begins its descent, I find myself dreading the questions left unanswered by my childhood.

The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?

The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.

Getting inside your character's head and letting the reader see the world through not just their eyes but their sensibility creates an intimacy that can't be duplicated in any other medium.

The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?

Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them.

What man wanted a woman without fire, and vice-versa?

Why was he drawn to complicated women, or were all women--all people, finally--complicated?

If you have it [love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.

Where they had once ambled alone, they now walked together home.

Speaking in front of a large crowd is not pleasant. Once it gets rolling, it's okay. But beforehand, it's murder.

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

Derek Taylor was where all the razz-ma-tazz and class sprang from; the Beatles were just charming, rich young men.

I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate.

I think it's almost better to start [acting] at a later age because you have more stuff to drawm from - more life experience. When you start too young, you grow up on a set.

The cause is hidden; the effect is visible to all.

The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional...it is theological.

In effect, we have redefined the task of science to be the discovery of laws that will enable us to predict events up to the limits set by the uncertainty principle.