JoAnn Ross quotes:

Life consists of two sides ... light and dark. Joy and sorrow. Without a balance, one cannot fully experience a full and well-rounded life.

I've always found ideas everywhere, but my favorite place is Nordstrom, because of their liberal return policies for those ideas that don't work out.

Bruises fade. Death is permanent.

If you don't have a burning passion for writing, how can you expect anyone else to be moved by what you write?

Reporters ... most were carrion who fed on human tragedy.

I've always loved books. My mother told me that before I could talk, I'd babble in my crib as I turned the pages of my little cloth books, apparently telling stories to go along with the pictures.

Any guy afraid to die was a guy who was afraid to live.

Never get in the middle of someone else's quicksand.

I was fortunate to sell at a time of great sea change in the romance genre; suddenly heroines were allowed to be portrayed as having rich, fulfilling lives. They didn't need a man for security or self-esteem, but having that one very special man in their lives proved the icing on the cake.

Most of the writers I know have somehow managed to stay in touch with that inner child who's never heard of such a thing as an internal editor.

One of the reasons writers are never satisfied with their work is because they're always striving to do better.

While the romance genre has expanded so much over the years, in an odd way it's also narrowed, with too many people trying to stick stories into tight, well-defined marketing niches. It can, admittedly, be a tricky balancing act, but I believe the key is to be able to step back and take a long hard look at what you do well, what makes your work different from other writers, what feels the most natural to you when you're writing.

I've always read suspense, so raising the stakes to life and death situations in my romance plots seemed natural.

Nothing about my life or my career has been linear.