My rule of writing is that no one can do what you can do, so jealousy or competitiveness are pointless. I am always happy when one of my sisters has a book published that I get to read.

The truth is rarely as dreadful or as terrifying as what one imagines.

For me, a good YA novel is the best kind of comfort food.

I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

Write what you care about, what interests and intrigues you.

The book that made a lasting impression was the one my mother gave each of us when she decided we were ready for our first "adult novel," Lucy Maud Montgomery's The Blue Castle.

A man notices a womans figure when she walks in a room. Women have eight million words for blue; a man says dark blue or light blue.

Our house was awash in books, and my mother doled out her favorites like they were special treats - which they were.

Phoebe Wolkind Ephron cracked wise like Dorothy Parker and looked like Katharine Hepburn.

Outlining is like putting on training wheels. It gives me the courage to write, but we always go off the outline.

Whenever a nation or a group of people is devoid of light, catastrophe comes, calamity hits, there is danger everywhere.

Bad dogs, she believed, were like most bad children: created by those around them. But then, that was a personal opinion.

Learn to say “please” and “thank you” in multiple languages.

You're your own best friend. If you love yourself and believe in yourself then it doesn't really matter what other people think and then you're kind of invincible.

People think if you have money, it'll fix the problems, but it creates different ones.

Children can find other children to be pals. Children need fathers to be fathers.

If one does not attach himself to people and desires, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

The two great words of antiquity are behold and beware. Behold the possibilities and beware the temptations.

Don't worry about what candidates have done or said, just vote for the Democrats. Then, afterwards, you can go eat fried chicken.

I'm sure that being an applicant from the American School in Vienna helped get me into all seven colleges I applied to.