E-readers are changing the way we read, and the author is now required to get out there and be a kind of showman, an unlikely role for introspective people used to working in their pajamas!

Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him.

Do what you love. Live fearlessly and take risks. Don't take no for an answer from anyone - go ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. Believe that anything can be possible.

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself.

Everyone thinks that a new place or a new identity will jumpstart a new life.

I was a bookworm who aced every test - until third grade, when my teacher handed out a pop quiz about Jesus and the Apostles.

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.

My first husband was a serial cheater.

Never be with anyone you couldn't imagine yourself being able to live without.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

Lily, the next time you tell me you don't know what to do with family. Because you know exactly. It's about loyalty and kindness and unconditional love, and you are more than capable of all that.

Believe, my child. Faith is the food of survival.

The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling . . . every crystal every flower a window opening into heaven a mirror reflecting the Creator.

Languages are the pedigree of nations.

Christmas is a baby shower that went totally overboard.

The simpler it is, the better I like it.

Contrast warm to cool. Make color sing, ring like a bell. Work from big to small.

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee! . . . . . . Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart: So didst thou travel on life's common way In cheerful godliness.