We need to make friends with ourselves. We are stuck with our self all day, so let's be kinder, gentler, more amusing company. Let's take our own hand and say, 'There, there, sister. You're doing a good job. I'm proud of how you're handling all this craziness down here. Don't give up. Carry on, warrior.'

I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses - because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing 'trends' rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us.

My greatest fear is that I'll fail my kids.

We'll tell fear it can come along with us in our minivan, okay? But we'll just tell fear it can't drive. Sometimes we'll tell it to not even talk. Like when we tell our kids, 'Enough. No words.' We're going to play the quiet game with fear. Fear is not the boss of us.

I don't want to make any judgments, and I don't want to preach, but I'm hoping that marriage can work: that when people do fall in love, when people do find their soul mate, everyone sticks to it. It has the potential to be a very powerful thing, marriage.

I believe me being married, having a life outside of fighting, gives me a mental break.

What I realized halfway through writing romance is that you start out intuitive, and you make all these choices mostly based on yourself and what you like and what talent you have, and... if you want to have any quality control over your product, you have to stop being intuitive and start being more of an analyst.

Hats are attached to special moments in people's lives - weddings, or the races. In difficult times, people still get married; they still want to look their best.