There are so many different ways, most of them helpful and legal, to get yourself into a state of mind where writing is possible. It's going to be different for each person.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.

Mostly what ends up inspiring me and affecting my work are books by authors that I love.

It is fun to be outside; it's good to move your body and there is just a joy in sports and athletics.

Original minds are not distinguished by being the first to see a new thing, but instead by seeing the old, familiar thing that is over-looked as something new.

Only when something becomes a problem for "me" as one of my goal orientated actions, do I pause in full stride, as it were, in order to learn the competencies that I lack.

Despite my lovely diction I am going to die.

The sun doesn't stop shining because some people are blind.

My dad and all my family were into baseball. His brothers, my mom's brothers, my mom's father. Baseball was just always a part of our family.

I do enjoy animated movies.

In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.