 Don't give up. There are too many nay-sayers out there who will try to discourage you. Don't listen to them. The only one who can make you give up is yourself. |
| If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them. |
| I wanted to make sure that the man who found the genie would not take terrible advantage of her, so he needed to be a person of integrity and honor - which is why I made the male lead an astronaut. The rest, as they say, is history. |
| I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story. |
| Stories had always been told about male genies coming out of bottles, but they were usually fat, old men. Never had the genie been a gorgeous woman, so that idea really appealed to me, and I created the series based on that premise. |
| Abraham Lincoln because he was a man filled with great compassion who believed that all men are created free and equal, and was not afraid to stand on that platform. The way Lincoln lived his life has served me well in mine. |
| When people tell me I've kept them up all night, I feel like I've succeeded. |
| The fact that my female characters have strong personalities but are also physically attractive probably reflects the women I've known in my life. |
| The Dalai Lama. He is a very wise man of great inner peace who believes that happiness is the purpose of our lives. Through his teachings and leadership, he continues to make this world a better place in which to live. |
| When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours. |
| I love the freedom that the narrative form provides. |
| There's this sense of excitement because you invent and control the characters. You decide whether they live or die. I find this type of creative process tremendously stimulating. |
| My heroes are those who risk their lives every day to protect our world and make it a better place - police, firefighters and members of our armed forces. |
| I admire people who are, by nature, kind and fair to others. |
| The part of my writing I find the most rewarding is when people write to me or speak to me in public to tell me how his or her life has been changed by my books. |
| I think that's because believable action is based on authenticity, and accuracy is very important to me. I always spend time researching my novels, exploring the customs and attitudes of the county I'm using for their setting. |
| Another woman approached me while I was having lunch at the Russian Tea Room in New York and told me that the reason she had become a lawyer was because she had read Rage of Angels. To me, that kind of feedback has more meaning than any sales figures. |
| Try to leave the Earth a better place than when you arrived. |
| Writing novels is the most exciting. |
| What I do is put my characters into situations that are so precarious there is no way to get out. And then I figure how to get them out. |
