Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.
So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.
The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.
Where there is life, Nan used to say, there is hope.
Don't look so worried. Most successful missions are just a series of barely averted disasters.
What is a nightstand without Mindy Kaling? I dip into her 'Why Not Me?' when I've had a particularly rough day. Her hilarious observations and anecdotes never fail to cheer me up.
If I refused to get married, my parents would be brokenhearted and confused. Like any child close to her parents, I could not watch them suffer.
Great novels have great characterization no matter what. But multiple points of view let me examine characters from entirely different perspectives, allowing me to learn more about everyone in the process.
When I was a kid, I worked as a clerk at my parent's motel. From when I was eight or nine, I rented rooms, helped with laundry, folding tons of towels. And then I also worked at my dad's gas station more as a young adult and as an adult.
For a while, gently bumping into my nightstand meant a pile of 50 books clattering onto my head and the floor. After the 10th time this happened, I moved most of the books to a shelf in the spare room. Now, my nightstand is sort of like a bookish country club. And not all books get in.
My parents worked harder than anyone I have ever met. They had so many businesses. There was the motel, but throughout my childhood, they also had a drive-through dairy, a gas station, a clothing store, a computer reselling business.
Evil comes in many forms, and whether you are male or female, that doesn't matter as much as what lurks in your mind.
I don't go on social media with a mercenary intent to promote. That's just wrong. I go to learn, to listen, to have fun, to find people who love what I love and who introduce me to new things. That's where the joy is: in the interactions.
I've loved mountains since I was a girl, and when I discovered mountaineering fiction after college, I was hooked.
I grew up in an isolated town, out in the middle of the Mojave Desert in the middle of a naval base. My family was one of the only South Asian families in this town. We felt it. We knew.
'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' is one of my all-time top YA fantasy trilogies, so I was a little nervous about reading 'Strange the Dreamer.' Of course, I shouldn't have been worried because Laini Taylor immediately grabbed me by the proverbial lapels and refused to let me go.
Some of my best book recommendations have come from booksellers.
Like me as a teen - and like many teenagers now - my characters are at a peculiar crossroads in their lives. They desperately seek freedom. But at the same time, they are constantly thwarted.
