Writing a novel is like traveling the universe on foot.

For me, all writing -- storytelling and style -- gets back to the Bible, Twain and Hemingway, and not in that order.

Storytelling? God started that. Discovery. Lust. Murder. Revenge. Power. Sin. Redemption. Forgiveness. Miracles. We simply retell the stories in the language of our generation.

Another drink, another sentence, and the writing continues on. . . .

For some offenses, there is only retribution." Nora Hawks, "One Woman's Vengeance.

Writing is easy. Writing is hard. It's a breeze and a struggle, just like life.

What fascinates me about writing is wrestling thought into reality and creating a new world that is forever.

Do you really think that laws made by men and a justice system maintained by men will ever be fair in cases of rape? Nora Hawks from One Bullet Beyond Justice

No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.

Though I carry always some ill-nature about me, yet it is, I hope, no more than is in this world necessary for a preservative.

Oldtimers, weekends, and airplane landings are alike. If you can walk away from them, they're successful.

I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.

Freedom. It's like no constraints, an opening, and then barriers going away and lifting and breaking and experimentation and...it's like attempting for something.

I hope (the United States) will change and they will now focus entirely on helping and building a stronger, better Afghanistan.

It's been hard in entertainment as a 45-year-old woman to find jobs. They get fewer and far between if you're older, unless you're one of the few lucky ones who work constantly, like Meryl Streep.

What if this were Hell, this absence of sleep, this poet's desert, this pain of living, this dying of not dying, this anguish of shadows, this passion over death and light.

Lunch is like, my first real meal of the day. I cannot eat anything in the morning, my body...I can only eat about two hours after I wake up.

So I only say, "So what should we do with our last few days?" "I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you," Peeta replies.