The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel Mississippi.

On the stage you alone hold the key and on the night you have to trust that the director has inspired you enough to take the material and run with it.

All my fans tell me what a glamorous life I have but I tell them how hard I work and how many nights I spend alone with my dogs eating chicken pot pie in my bedroom.

Now on nights that I can't sleep I play video games alone until the morning.

Without strength and courage it's really hard to perform at the highest levels of international figure skating because you're alone on the ice and you only have seven minutes over two nights to prove yourself.

One of the places where we lived when I was growing up had this big wood out the back. And starting when I was about 8 I used to enjoy just walking alone through the wood late. Eleven p.m. Midnight. Later.

And if you don't believe the sun will rise stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.

When I get into bed at night I hope I don't get into it alone!

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness and we are strange and beautiful asleep for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.

The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone - and I mean utterly alone like no one else in the world alone - at night. That's the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it's also where the title came from for the book.