I feel like you don't know if someone's equipped for a romantic relationship until they're out of their twenties.

A relationship to me is never about the romance.

I lived by the candlelight for two years because I couldn't afford power. It was nice and romantic at the time but if you can't afford power you're pretty broke. You endure it.

In my books and in romance as a genre there is a positive uplifting feeling that leaves the reader with a sense of encouragement and hope for a brighter future - or a brighter present.

My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff but the damage.

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice heroism war politics and family struggle.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

I've got a book of poetry by the bed one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.

The romanticised life where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.

Romance like a ghost escapes touching it is always where you are not not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time but it is poetry in the memory.