If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading.

We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.

Thornton Wilder

This is the subject, said Pierre Villiers. It gives me scope to amuse and tell the truth at the same time. A man pierces a hole in the wall of a boarding-house room, and watches what is going on in the next room.

Henri Barbusse

Receiving a new truth is like adding a new sense.

Liebig

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.

Mother Teresa

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Serena B. Miller

No voice teacher can be all things to all people. You have to gain information from whatever sources you can. You have to listen.

Renee Fleming

The art of politics consists in knowing precisely when it is necessary to hit an opponent slightly below the belt.

Konrad Adenauer

Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way.

Isaac Goldberg

When by the Ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did castAnd here and there the places spyWhere oft I sate and long did lie.Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest,There lay that store I counted best,My pleasant things in ashes lieAnd them behold no more shall I.Under the roof no guest shall sit,Nor at thy Table eat a bit.No pleasant talk shall 'ere be toldNor things recounted done of old.No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee,Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee.In silence ever shalt thou lie.

Anne Dudley Bradstreet, Verses u

Ben Says: Be kind and empathetic to all...so that in your time of need, they may be the same to you.Timothy PinaBullying Ben

Timothy Pina

It ain't over 'till it's over.

Yogi Berra

People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.

Jodi Picoult