Molly O'Keefe

“I, for one, love kids in my romance novels. When done right, kids add so much conflict. Not just of the 'interruption on the way to the bedroom' variety. But conflict about commitment and insecurity.”

“Sometimes, maybe we don’t know exactly what we have until someone shows us.”

“I came into reality television with MTV's show 'The Real World,' specifically the 1994 season set in San Francisco. I was glued to the Puck and Pedro drama.”

“Perhaps it's because I am reading romance differently than I did when I was younger, but I like my characters older. Grounded in reality. And nothing is more real than kids.”

“It's funny what memory does, isn't it? My favorite holiday tradition might not have happened more than once or twice. But because it is such a good memory, so encapsulating of everything I love about the holidays, in my mind it happened every year. Without fail.”

“As I continue to write as M. O'Keefe, I find myself following darker story lines. Plots I might have flinched away from I now rush toward. Using sex as a tool to tell women's stories is endlessly fascinating.”

“I loved books. Loved reading. It not only gave me an escape from my own world, but opened a door into other worlds. It allowed me, at the beginning of my marriage, to suffer with some grace. As long as I had another world to go to, what did I care about how small and strange and terrifying my own life had gotten?”

“Reality television paints a simple black-and-white world of good characters and bad characters; people we want to root for and people we want to see ruined. There is none of the gray ambiguity that colors real life. I no longer watch a lot of reality television, but sometimes I can't look away from 'Honey Boo Boo.' I just can't.”

“A lot of times, the inspiration for a novel is a messy bird's nest of shiny things. Little things that don't make a whole lot of sense or that, no matter how hard you look, cannot be found directly in the finished book.”

“For many characters, the prospect of having a child in their life brings up a lot of issues about their own parents. And who doesn't love that? Bad mommy or daddy issues are a delicious staple in romance novels.”

“You’re not broken, Dylan. I know you’re not.”

“My son is getting close to the age that I remember watching Scrooge, and as he loves to be scared, I can't wait to start my favorite holiday tradition all over again with him.”

“She was saying words she didn’t totally believe yet. And maybe I was, too. But I wanted them to be true. For the first and only time in my life, I wanted to belong to someone and have that person belong to me.”

“In college - while figuring the things out that most people do in college - I had no game. No confidence. I had Birkenstocks. And overalls. A budding romance novel addiction. But no cool. No poise. I was trying on a thousand different personalities, but a lot of them were formed by the perceptions of others.”

“I've written 26 books and novellas as Molly O'Keefe. I moved through three different Harlequin lines and into single-title romance with Bantam writing under that name. Fun fact: It's not my name, and it's not even one I picked.”

“After church on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, my family would go chop down our Christmas tree. Once it was home and placed in its stand, Mom and I would painstakingly decorate our tree. It took hours to place the tinsel, string the lights, find the perfect spot for my favorite macaroni and felt ornaments from kindergarten.”

“When I started to write 'Crazy Thing Called Love,' I wanted a conflict that would not only bring Billy and Maddy together in terms of proximity and give them a common goal but that would also drive a wedge between them. And nothing fit the bill quite like the arrival of some children.”

“I loved 'Friday Night Lights' because it was totally committed to every facet of its storytelling. Incredible actors, story lines that weren't easy or predictable. It made me laugh, and it broke my heart over and over again.”

“It’s about his family. It will always be about his family. And himself. Deep in your heart you know that and you’re trying to convince yourself that you can save him. And you can’t. There’s no saving Dylan Daniels.”

“I just realized, baby, right now, thinking of how I could take this pain away from you, I just realized that you have to feel it. You gotta make your way through all the bad stuff to get to the good.”