I put that part of myself into both Brendan and Evelyn [from The Thorn and the Blossom] - as well as some of my own anxieties about the academic life!

Accept criticism. If you do not offer your work for criticism and accept that criticism, meaning give it serious thought and attention, then you will never improve.

What writers do - everything comes from inside, from experiences of the world that we have digested. And then we turn it into silk, or stories.

If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.

I think part of my purpose in this life is to talk about magic, and to make it.

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me.

The appeal of writing a romance was that I'd never written one before the The Thorn and The Blossom.

I loved writing something I'd never written before, and I wanted to write not just about "true love" but also a human relationship.

I actually pushed the boundaries on how long a book like this [The Thorn and the Blossom] can be. The original plan called for two 7,500 word stories, and I turned in two 10,000 word stories.

I've heard some readers saying they wished the story was longer, and I completely understand that desire - we all like to sink into a nice, long novel.

It's appropriate to have magic in a love story, because magic is a sort of metaphor for what love feels like? When we fall in love, the world feels magical to us. It becomes an enchanted place.

No one can steal my peace of mind without my consent.

You have to keep doing it, Even if no one is watching. The best artists, are those Who live from their expressions, Not chasing the impressions.

No...No...We don't walk away but when we're holding on to something precious we run. We run away. We run as fast as we can.

Write to evolve and you'll evolve to write.

I was a vegetarian first. I had high blood pressure at 27, everybody in my family died of cancer, and I knew it was in the food, so I changed my diet.

I am still a hard-core romantic.

Self-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such are the theologic virtues of marriage.

What does Christmas mean if we can't encourage small children to sit on a stranger's lap?

Draw with the brush. Carve the form. Don't be carried away by subtleties of modeling and nice pigmentation at the expense of losing the form.

And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.