I was a terrible Sugar Babies addict, so I had more cavities than the surface of the moon.
One of my goals is to allow readers to see my characters and the world they inhabit as vividly as possible.
Whenever there was a crisis, I found a man to help me take the edge off the feelings of helplessness and pain.
It's no mistake that the moment of impregnation is called conception: at first, parenthood is nothing more than an idea.
I've been willing to go for years without publishing. That's been my career.
The difference between a novelist and someone who tinkers around with writing is this: novelists finish their books.
I guess I'm drawn to artists and literary people and want to learn about them.
The thing I don't like about detective stories is looking for criminals.
Over the years, I've spent time in Saudi Arabia, the Bekaa Valley, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Kenya, among other vacation hotspots.
It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.
Often we don't even know what we think ourselves about people in our lives.
I read a lot of 'Nancy Drew' books as a kid and considered myself a bit of an amateur detective.
You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.
Of the paperbacks that you see at the airport, I am the most violent woman writer.
There is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.
I soon discovered, after I became chairman of the NEH, that, for a number of academics, the truth was not merely irrelevant - it no longer existed.
Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.
What the power structure is afraid of is that we're going to learn to recognize the truth when we hear it.
I wrote a piece for the school literary magazine that now makes me think: 'My God in Heaven, this is just the worst drivel.'
We have grown used to money. The handling, the increase of it, is the chief business of life now with most of us.
In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.
