In a fire, you have to be thoughtful; you have to have a certain kind of intuitive smarts that the veterans have. I'm not there yet, despite the Stanford degree.

I told her (Powell) she didn't need that Stanford degree to do that,

Brave rifles, veterans, you have been baptized in fire and blood and have come out steel!

Fire taps something ancient and vital in each of us, something both snarling and reverential.

There is a certain degree of 'steampunkishness' that creeps into my books.

By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awareness to inform the events she describes.