"I want you. I want you under me and over me and around me. And you want."

"I guess money can't buy happiness if you shop in the wrong places."

"The wounded recognized the wounded."

"I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career."

"All he'd learned was that love was a jewel with too many facets to count. Strength and weakness running side by side through it. And that no one could give or take it with any less than an open hand."

"There's no reward without work, no victory without effort, no battle won without risk."

"And yet, anything real, anything strong, was never easy. She'd been taught from an early age that the things that mattered most were the hardest to obtain."

"Do you know how many ways love can hit you? So it makes you happy, or miserable? It makes you sick in the belly or hurt in the heart. It makes everything brighter and sharper, or it blurs all the edges. It makes you feel like a king or a fool. Every way love can hit you, it's hit me when it comes to you."

"Don't give up on your own happy-evers."

"Are you telling me you're cooking me dinner?- Regan Its the quickest way, without physical contact, to get a woman into bed. The kitchen through there?"

"The most important aspect of any story, to me, is character."

"If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place."

"I would hope that my writing's cleaner than it was when I started."

"Change--savor the cool, fresh flavor of it."

"Family's the luck of the draw, Lena. What you make of yourself, because of or despite it, that's where the spine and heart come in."

"Niall: We're tossed by the winds of fate. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves that we will."

"I believe strongly in writing groups such as Romance Writers Of America that offer support, information and networking."

"Love's a gift, and can certainly be refused. Refusing doesn't destroy the gift, it simply puts it aside. You're free to do that. I'm not expecting a gift in return. Take what's offered, especially when it's offered so generously and without expectations."

"Mary Stewart will always be my goddess. I can pick up one of her early books - one I've read a dozen times - and still slide right into the story."

"A relationship isn't something that has to be created in a day or perfected in a day. Part of the game is to keep working on it. It's something that'll always be just a little flawed."

"Bright light. You've always found your way."

"Compromise isn't so painful if you're the one setting the terms."

"Survivors lived with their mistakes."

"Memories are nice little possessions. As long as you don't ignore the present when you take them out to play."

"I find I use the Internet more and more. It's just an invaluable tool. I do most of my research on the Net now - and certainly do the bulk of my communicating through email."

"Who I am now is who I was before. The three years between, they were the aberration. You wouldn't recognize the person I became during that lost time. I barely do."

"Aren't most romance heros, or heros in fiction of any kind, generally superior to real men? Same goes for heroines and real women."

"I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page."

"I generally write a first draft that's pretty lean. Just get the story down."

"You don't find time to write. You make time. It's my job."

"Do you see that out there? The strange, unfamiliar light? It's called the sun. Let's go get us a little."

"Grayson: Fiction is just a lie anyway.Brianna: But it's not - it's a different kind of truth - it would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn't it?"

"I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure."

"Good fiction creates its own reality."

"There was nothing like a Saturday - unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball."

"You can fix anything but a blank page."

"You walked in, and the air changed. It gives you an advantage and you're enough of a challenge. I'm not trying to be a challenge. It's one of the things that makes you one."

"New York had saved him, in a very real way. It had pushed and prodded him with its impatient and sharp fingers, reminding him on a daily basis during that jittery first year that it didn't really give a goddamn whether he sank or swam. He liked its selfishness and its generosity and its propensity for flipping the bird to the rest of the world."

"My own brother calling me a brickhead. Sneering faeries insulting me. Women punching me in the face. How much more am I to swallow in one bloody day?"

"To fate and the strange way that it twists us all together."

"Writing had never become routine for him, but remained a constant surprise. He was always surprised at how much fun it was, once it all got moving. And never failed to be surprised at how bloody hard it was. It was like having an intense, frustrating love affair with a capricious, gorgeous, and often mean-spirited woman.He loved every moment of it."

"She walked with a ghost of herself, one full of potential and possibility. One who was fearless. Where had that girl gone?"

"Love wasn't the soft, silky words the poets spoke of. Love,with it's twin edges, was the one factor that weakened so many women, that pushed them to compromised their own wants, their own needs for the needs and wants of another."

"I read a lot - and I read a variety of genres."

"Shannon: Only the living suffered. Only they were riddled with guilt and regret and unanswered questions."

"He loved his job. What was advertising, anyway, but a knowledge of people and of which buttons to push to nudge them into opening their wallets?It was, he often though, an accepted, creative, even expected twist on picking those wallets. For a man who had spent the first half of his life as a thief, it was the perfect career."

"We all look. The lucky find. The wise accept."

"You can't edit a blank page."

"Roz to Amelia (the house ghost): How considerate of you, after trying to kill me, to see that I don't catch a cold."

"Action, reaction, motivation, emotion, all have to come from the characters. Writing a love scene requires the same elements from the writer as any other."