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" Ultimately, the less I know about what I'm doing, the better the work is. "

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" When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen. "

" Sometimes the best reading comes just by accident. Someone talks about a book, or you're just wandering the stacks in the library, and you find a book that you love. "

" I like my house to feel like a place where I can just lie back and say, 'Ahhhhh, I'm home.' "

" If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it. "

" We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading. "

" I have always believed in helping people whose work I admire. "

" One of the great pleasures in writing 'The Dream Lover' was learning about some of the real people who populated George Sand's life. What a cast of characters! And what a pleasure to recreate them upon the page! "

" As for the notion that everything has already been said, maybe it has, but life is like meatloaf: there are so many different ways to present it. "

" I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book. "

" Writing is, of course, a solitary occupation. But for many writers, myself included, it's through writing that we make certain vital connections. "

" I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se. "

" When I wrote 'Home Safe,' I wanted to look at a number of things: the mystery and joy and pain of creativity. What happens when a vital safety net is suddenly removed. The difficulty some people have in growing up. The way a deep love can be as crippling as it is satisfying. But mostly, I wanted to look at the mother-daughter relationship. "

" I love to listen to people talk, especially when they're being really honest and they're not trying to sound any particular way. "

" Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work. "

" I think the most important quality for a writer to have is empathy. "

" Traditions are the inventions of people who mean to routinely put love and comfort and meaning into their lives and in the lives of those they live with. "

" When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads. "

" When you have that deep kind of hunger that is part longing, what's better to eat than the best apple pie? Or the best potato salad and guacamole? Or the best deviled eggs and crab cakes and white chocolate raspberry pie? "

" It is true that all mothers do things differently from their own mothers, but they don't necessarily do them better. "

" It is one thing to see your friend dance around a table when she's 25, quite another thing to see her doing it when she's 62. "

" People don't take you seriously, so you have to take yourself seriously. "

" The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books. "

" No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story. "

" No matter what you write, you need an active imagination. "

" Nurses don't get paid very much. It didn't take long to realize that I could make more as a writer. I loved nursing, but I loved writing more. "

" I think titles are extremely important for novels: They can set the tone, tip you off, serve as shorthand for what the essential contents are. "

" You need a place to work that works for you, and you need people to understand that when you are writing, you are doing a rarefied type of brain surgery and therefore should not be subject to a million random interruptions. "

" When you've written long enough, you see that there's a common theme in your work. "

" As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work. "

" My favorite splurge is homemade chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream or a Sausage McMuffin with egg or scalloped potatoes or turkey yanked right off the carcass and dipped in gravy or See's chocolate. "