Catherine Ryan Hyde

“If you want to see a man come to his senses, try something like, Do you happen to carry a rubber in your wallet? Did I mention I'm not on the pill?”

“There is no wrong way to perform an act of kindness.”

“We do crazy shit because we're broken.”

“I really only have been seriously writing, finishing things and publishing things since January '91.”

“... even though it was beautiful and comfortable, and even though it was the world, it was also a little bit boring. No, wait. Maybe boring isn’t the right word. What’s the word I’m wanting here? Lonely. That’s it. It was a little bit lonely.”

“I have a number of questions. If I had half as many answers, I’d be in great shape.”

“I felt the kiss still there on my forehead. Literally. It was frozen there. I could still feel it. I wanted to bronze it, like people do with baby shoes. I wanted to mount it and hang it over my mantelpiece.”

“I've been known to write 10 pages a day for 10 days running before I take a breath. I am not a disciplined writer. I'm one of those people who laughingly call themselves inspirational writers, which basically means someone who has no control over their own creative process.”

“Since we all know for a fact that we're all going to die, why don't we all treat each other like we could lose each other at any minute?”

“One of the nice things about publishing with Amazon is that the window for marketing is much longer than with a traditional publisher because these titles are not coming off of shelves.”

“The most important thing I can add from my own observations is this: Knowing it started from unremarkable circumstances should be a comfort to us all. Because it proves that you don't need much to change the entire world for the better. You can start with the most ordinary ingridients. You can start with the world you've got.”

“Ah, yes. That. The sin of being happy or excited. According to my father, we must guard carefully against such things. According to my father, these emotions are the equivalent of dancing on out fifth-floor window ledge. Clearly inviting a nasty fall.”

“It’s just words. How can words be dangerous?”“You have a lot to learn about the world, baby girl. Nothing is more dangerous than words.”“That’s stupid. What about a gun? A gun can kill you dead.”“Only your body,” Billy said. “It can’t kill your soul. Words can kill your soul.”

“Sometime around 2006, I decided I had missed my true calling as a young adult author.”

“[Rayleen talking to Billy.] "Grace is thriving here, and I dare anybody to challenge that. Anybody who has a problem with that can come take it up with me.""Thank God," Billy said, "because I really hate it when people come take things up with ME.”

“As authors, we all have to learn not to be reactive to public statements about our books. It's really not our business what each reader thinks of them.”

“When I write, my goal is to delve deeply enough into the human experience to find a sort of universality. Once you dig down underneath surface differences, we are all human beings. And all human beings want essentially the same things at our core. We want to love and be loved. We want to be safe. We want our loved ones to be safe.”

“[Grace talking to Billy.] "It's like people who want to feel only happy but not sad," she said. "It never works. You either feel things or you don't. You don't get to pick and choose. At least, I don't think so.”

“Those who write may think they know their target market. They may even feel they can shape the work to fit it. If this is true of you, you have more control over your creative process than I do. Even so, I humbly submit that you try letting your writing shape your target market instead and see what happens.”

“I don't think you feel much of anything anymore.”