Take the time today to understand your contribution to any bad event you've just been through.

Basically, it's in your best mental interest to release your anger so you can see the world more clearly around you and seek better solutions for finding the happy, love-filled life you desire and deserve.

If you're human, you've had phases in your life when things are in flux.

I hate to wait. When I want something, I want it now.

If you want to lose weight, you must make sure your appetite for life is far bigger than your appetite for mere food.

Watching TV produces low levels of satisfaction because it doesn't challenge you. Instead, do something that raises your self-esteem. Tap into your 'signature strengths' - things you're good at or passionate about.

Our built-in human system for mimicry explains why we humans can transfer our good and bad moods to each other - if we aren't careful!

Numerous studies have shown how when one person in a romantic coupling gets depressed, the other becomes more depressed.

If your partner is consistently unhappy, it won't matter if they're incredibly sexy, wildly funny, impressively successful, adorably charismatic - your relationship will be weighed down under the heaviness of their moods.

Studies show when people yell, they get themselves even angrier. Interesting factoid: If you and/or your partner's heartbeat becomes higher than 100 beats per minute during an argument, you will not be able to fully understand/process what the other is saying.

I believe we are our own inner hand - the godly power resides within each of us to create the lives we desire - no matter what the challenges!

Instead of asking God to remove our problems so that our lives might be happy, we must purposefully try to learn as much as we can - and thereby become happier due to our insights and growth.

Breaking up is hard to do... so it's essential to keep getting wiser - and wiser - about what healthy love is all about.

You must remind yourself: The #1 reason to merge your life with a man is that he makes you feel happier - not more anxious and depressed.

Are you used to entertaining everyone with your tales of drama and conflict? Do you get attention and feel important every time you complain about how awful this man is? Stop settling for attention for the negative stuff in your life.

I firmly believe caretaking the soul is incredibly important for happiness.

Even if you live in a big city, everybody lives in a small town. We identify ourselves by our neighborhoods - 'I live in the Village, or in Chelsea.'

Reading develops cognitive skills. It trains our minds to think critically and to question what you are told. This is why dictators censor or ban books. It's why it was illegal to teach slaves to read. It's why girls in developing countries have acid thrown in their faces when they walk to school.

Graphic novels let you take risks that just wouldn't fly in the conventional book form.

Jack Reacher is one of the sexiest characters in fiction.

Even 'Gone With the Wind' had a shocking, cold-blooded murder.

Equal access to reading is fundamental to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

With 'Pretty Girls,' I saw the opportunity to talk not just about crime but what crime leaves behind.

As much as we would like to deny it, reading is not vital to human survival.

Growing up in Georgia in the southeastern United States, I was always reading and always kept to myself. I never felt isolated, though; I just liked being alone.

It sounds pretentious to say I 'divide' my time, but when I am home, that usually means my house in Atlanta or my cabin in the North Georgia Mountains. The latter is where I do the majority of my writing.

Reading is power. Reading is life.

I read a lot of true crime growing up - 'The Stranger Beside Me' by Ann Rule about Ted Bundy.

No crime lab in the world looks like the 'CSI' ones because there's simply not the money for all those fancy machines.

I never really fitted in, because I've always been interested in really dark things.

As a writer, I've always felt it's my job to be extremely careful when writing about victims, especially women.

When I became a published writer, I said, 'Whatever I can do to help the libraries I want to do,' so all of my book tours since then have involved me coming to a library and talking about how important libraries are for a community.

Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.

I thought I had to write literature and add my name to the list of great Southern storytellers. Fortunately for me, no one wanted to read any of those stories. They got rejected by everyone. Sometimes, I would get a note saying they liked the writing, but the story simply didn't work.

Flannery O'Connor was a revelation for me. When I read her, I was very young, and I didn't understand what she was doing. I didn't see any of the Catholicism or any of the social stuff.

Visual storytelling is at once immediate and subversive.

When I was growing up, my stepmother's sister was the chief detective in one of the adjoining towns, so she piqued my interest in crime.

Usually, when inspiration strikes late, the light of day reveals that I haven't gotten an idea for a book so much as a psychiatric case study.

I think a lot of people are curious about what makes people do what they do, and I guess my curiosity isn't hidden in any way.

I read about violent things. I think what I get out of that is entertainment by learning about different things, and reading the genre and getting an understanding of motivations. But at the end of the day, it's still a book, and I can walk away.

I certainly went to high school with some mean girls, and I would not wish that hell on anybody.

I love puns. I've been known to turn the car around just to take advantage of a good pun situation. It really is the highest form of humor.

My job isn't to preach to people, it's to entertain them. I like letting the characters speak for themselves.

I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.

As awful as crime can be, it's what happens afterward - the struggling to get out of bed, to put one foot in front of the other - that alters people.

Libraries are the backbone of our education system.

The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'

Oh, I'm completely OCD about neatness.

Pushing the boundaries of polite society does not just fall under the purview of crime fiction authors.

Crafting a piece of gripping, narrative true crime that engages the world is not that different from crafting a piece of crime fiction.