When you write, you're supposed to go stand somewhere else for a while, see things from a perspective that's not in line with your own reflexive truths.

I don't think virtue has a downside. I think human nature does.

I've always hated quotation marks: they're ugly on the page and they classify the text for you, putting dialogue in one box and narration in another.

I have to trick myself into writing a story - impose some arbitrary constraint to distract me from the constraints of my past habits or my fear that I don't have much to say.

I think it's very hard to be sexually explicit and erotic - though there are writers, like K. M. Soehnlein, who are just brilliant at this.

If you cross-section anyone's life from one angle and then another, what constitutes goodness looks different each time. It's not an absolute.

You have to be able to play: this is spontaneous interaction, and it flexes all the creative muscles you need as a writer. And empathy is one of those muscles.

Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.

Love is the strongest soul.

Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.

Even when we make mistakes, we hope others will love us in spite of our shortcomings - even if we don't deserve it.

We should have high expectations of our children, but politicians should not tell teachers how to meet them.

Very well. I shall try to think like an idiot.

A secret makes a woman woman - Vermouth

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

I will never make my family perfect, but I will make it better everyday.

All women are lips, nothing but lips.