We have years to converse with someone, to blurt and rant, to explain our desires and anger and regrets - and oh how we squander those moments.

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.

You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say

In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.

When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.

...like my own granddad used to say, if you get down to the nub of it, people don't change.That's not true, Katie thought. Not at all. Everyone changed, all the time. That was what was so hard.

There was a monster in me that had to be fed by success. There is a monster in us all that has to be fed by something.

About this time, whether he felt there wasn't sufficient drama in his life or that he was determined not to be outdone by Miss McCabe, he decided that he was dying.

I don't mean to change the subject or anything, but have you tried concealer on that zit?" Cynthia Lotte - Hot Six

I have to get involved in my own kind of way 'cause I always want to respect my own judgments. I have to respect my own time.

I welcome the opportunity (even if painful) that my minute to minute experience offers me to become aware of the addictions I must reprogram to be liberated from my robot-like emotional patterns.

I'm not an executive. I can do it, I have the mind for it, but there's a life that you have to lead, and you have to give up your creative freedom. That's what I don't want to give up.

It is better to burn out then fade away

I would have to say the probability of us dying seems extremely high.