Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.

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.

Oh, Alice, you haven’t even had a taste of my romantic streak yet. And when the time’s right I don’t think I’ll have to ‘try’ to have my way with you. I just WILL.

If your heart is pure, you block any harm.

In all controversies, it is better to wait the decisions of time, which are slow and sure, than to take those of synods, which are often hasty and injudicious

Over my dead body, I thought. Yes, even immortals use that phrase. It has extra oomph for us.

I've had people come up to me in the past and say they enjoyed whatever show I've been in.

I'm against abortion. On the other hand, I believe in a woman's choice.

I really, really don't think that, outside of maybe some pink wigs, [that] there's anything that separates me from every other woman in America.

I want to keep coaching as long as I can. I love teaching and working with student athletes and I love being at the University of Tennessee.

I think we live in a world where "the normal," is just a cut that each society creates for itself, but leaves out a number of situations, thoughts, and events as part of what we catalog as normal.

People are terrified for their own reputations. They want the press on their side.