“'Little Night' comes from deep in my heart, and tells about the lengths people will go for love.”
“Several of my favorite cousins and some of my best friends are lawyers, and I find the profession endlessly fascinating.”
“When my father died, I was 21, and he'd been sick for a few years. He changed during his illness. He kind of softened during it.”
“A lot of writers dream of feature films, but television - by way of TNT, CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark Hall of Fame - has always called my name. And after seeing 'True Detective,' can there be any doubt that the storytelling on TV is as genius as it gets?”
“I am a close friend of Robert Loggia. And I just love how, with actors, there's the screen persona. Here is Robert, known for his portrayal of many characters, including gangsters. But in real life, he is elegant and erudite. He sits in the garden reading the sonnets of William Shakespeare.”
“I was married to a law student, and I used to attend classes with him at Georgetown University Law Center. Being of dramatic bent, I was drawn mainly to Criminal law and Evidence classes. A just-beginning writer, I would find an empty chair and listen, mesmerized, to the lectures.”
“I went to Cork, Ireland, and stood on the dock some of my ancestors had left from. I felt their ghosts gather round me, and I cried to imagine what it must have felt like - leaving that beautiful land and those beloved people, knowing it was forever.”
“My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'”
“My first three-sisters novel in a while, 'Sandcastles' tells the story of the Sullivan family - two passionate artists and their three wildly different daughters. There's also a renegade nun and a mystery man, but I don't want to give too much away!”
“My mother painted and wrote. She always had a painting in progress on an easel in the kitchen, so our house always smelled like oil paint. At night, she wrote after she'd put my sisters and me to bed, and the sound of her typing was our lullaby.”