While I'm writing YA, I can't read YA, and the same with adult. I usually only listen to music while I'm writing YA.
Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.
Because music is a language unto itself, when I'm writing, I need silence. I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.
I can't write a line without music - it provides just the right amount of distraction to keep me focused. Clearly, I still miss the noisy roommates.
The difference between the men and the boys in politics is, and always has been, that the boys want to be something, while the men want to do something.
Men turn to formal wear when they want a new job or when they think their current one is in danger. They try to present themselves as powerful and successful.
Osama Bin Laden is dead. Killed not by a massive troop deployment but by a commando raid carried out by a few dozen highly trained men and helicopters.
To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men.
Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.
One common denominator of super-affluent alpha men is the conviction, unchallenged every day, that the world revolves around them.
Bloody men are like bloody buses - you wait for about a year and as soon as one approaches your stop two or three others appear.
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.
Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.
I used to have a blankie, and when my mom had to wash it, I would sit outside the dryer and watch it go round and round, and cry.
My mom tells me every single day that she's proud of me.
I am a classic Star Trek fanatic. When I was a kid, my mom and I used to go to conventions.
Washington has got to, across the board, lower taxes for small businesses so that our mom and pops can reinvest and hire people, so that our businesses can thrive.
I am proud of my kids, but I also want to make my mom proud of me. I'm still a momma's girl at the heart of the situation.
On the contrary, it might even be a projection of what the truth is of the Bush Administration's complacency and ineptitude on the terrorism in its first 9 months in office.
Over the past two decades, we have clearly seen an erosion of ethical values.
