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.

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

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.

Ah, two firm friends, reunited at last! There should be sweet violin music playing for us, but I'll settle for the screams of the dying.

all men carry murder in their hearts, yet even so, the poisoner is beneath contempt.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

I don't mind playing the same character, but if it's not well done, then I'm not interested.

Curling is not a sport. I called my grandmother and told her she could win a gold medal because they have dusting in the Olympics now.

My all-time favorite program in my entire life was 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'

To meet at all, one must open ones eyes to another; and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other.

The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.

Common sense meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which we now call by this name.

That first concept is alway the most naturally and best. The mind errs, the emotion never.