If there was ever a time to boil up some grits it is now.

I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now, where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives.

Remember that the writing itself is good for you. If your story is so close to home that you are afraid to write it, it probably means you need to write it.

When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.

I take mentoring very seriously and as a result I hardly get any work done during the school year.

This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

Abandonment doesn't have the sharp but dissipating sting of a slap. It's like a punch to the gut, bruising your skin and driving the precious air from your body.

My first novel, Leaving Atlanta, took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.

It's funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.

When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.

The job of the united nations is to grow more flowers on the earth.

But the place where we're most broken, most empty of ourselves... is the place where we can be filled in a way that is harder for people who haven't experienced a loss.

The knowledge of my sin Is half-repentance.

I met Rodney when I first moved to LA, so I'd say 20 years. He's the eternal teenager.

America still is the center of the world, and what happens in the American economy matters everywhere.

I remember coming to this college in the 1960s as a new legislator when a road divided the campus - and it was not fully paved at that - and no wall defined the campus from the highway.

If we have one real strength, it's commitment and determination

The coolest thing about doing live shows is I'm able to give the songs a new life. So even thought they're old, I'm able to do them in a way that's modern.

Clothing is ultimately the suit of armor in which we battle the world.

They are done merely for ornament. ... the common people regard them as supernatural.