"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Everyone needs a woman who'll listen, take your side, tell the truth - or not, as you need it. A woman you can count on, no matter what, and who'll love you no matter how much you screw up."

"Brother, when beauty falls into your hand, you hold on to it while you can. You could be dead tomorrow.Well, that's... inspiring."

"You don't fix a man the way you do a fault in a pipe or a leak in a roof. You take him as he is, Mary Brenna, or you don't take him at all...adjustments can't be all made on one side, darling, else the balance goes off and what's being built just falls down."

"Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice."

"Be yourself. Be true to that, to your heart. Patience. See what happens if you step back instead of bounding forward."

"Love runs the engine."

"Knowing isn't always believing."

"It was a well-aimed arrow. Had anyone even noticed she was no longer at the library? All the people she'd worked with, worked for? All the patrons she'd helped? Had she been so replaceable that her absence hadn't caused a single ripple?Hadn't she mattered at all?"

"Love spells are nothing but wives' tales. You can't play magic inside the heart, for it's more powerful than any spell. Lust you can order up with a wink, desire with a smile. But love is love, and there is nothing can touch it."

"Every writer has to figure out what works best - and often has to select and discard different tools before they find the one that fits."

"Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live."

"I'm going to treat myself to one of these as a reward for not knocking himself unconscious with a skillet."

"Fictional people are people, too, otherwise why would we care what happens to them?"

"Witches, he thought. Always rhyming."

"He won't be one of those girlishly pretty men with curly gold hair...He'll be dark, dangerous, too. Brave, certainly, but not without flaws. I like my heroes human."

"Men didn't respect beauty...they used it."