Ashley Bell

People hide truths about themselves from themselves. Such self-deception is a coping mechanism, and to one extent or another, most people begin deceiving themselves when they're children.

Growing up, I was a huge fan of horror movies. There's nothing more fun than going into a movie with a smile because you know you're going to be scared to death. There's something thrilling about sitting there waiting for a scare to happen.

Dogs needed no words to console you. Dogs were the ultimate practitioners of the therapy of touch. Dogs knew and accepted the hard realities of life that human beings could not acknowledge until those obvious truths were exhaustively described with words, and even then there was often more bitter acknowledgment than humble acceptance.

As a writer, Bibi, you could be a doctor of the soul.