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.

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.

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.

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.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

The key is in the craft.

Sometimes the hardest journeys are the ones that begin with little hope. But we need to take them anyway.

The letters released something, maybe a sense that he was not alone, that the world was a place where travelers in language could know the same things.

I write for pages, get lost in the mezzaninehidden from stages.

This is the feeling that gives a man true courage-the feeling that he has a work to do at all costs; the sense of duty.

I didn't know I hit that way (.625 with runners in scoring position). Maybe not knowing is my secret. If I chased numbers, maybe I wouldn't have as good results.

It was under Wilson, of course, that the first huge parts of the Marxist program, such as the progressive income tax, were incorporated into the American system.

And she looked at me like she couldn't believe I knew she loved Anne Rice. I guess he didn't know how much she talked or how much I listened.

Religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word!