I definitely feel like when I write a book it's not my job to police or guide the readers. The book and the characters don't belong to me anymore. If that makes sense.

My fear was like a stray dog, roving the neighborhood of my life, looking for a new source of worry.

I didn't read about it for school. It was just for myself. I was interested in cults in general but Jonestown was the most interesting of all the cults I studied.

I'm felt I was writing about love and desire and community and belonging and grief and a whole host of other issues. But race is never far from the surface.

I was influenced growing up by everything from Harlequin romances to Fedor Dostoyevsky and Albert Camus, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and later Lydia Davis, Mary Gaitskill, bell hooks.

I'm increasingly less interested in classic storylines and that arc that we have come to expect.

Motherhood. It was hard to get lost in anything else completely when children were 3 years old.

I'm not trying to be coy, but I think everyone notices these things like skin color but some people are more aware that they are noticing them than others, maybe. If that makes sense.

I guess the subject of race is so natural to me I never think of it as hefty. It's something I talk about and joke about and discuss with my loved ones every day of my life.

I don't like stories that are too neat and too resolved. I think resolutions can be deadening for the reader.

I think cults never stop being interesting and I'm intrigued by how we all do a tiny bit of submitting to a larger group - and how they can sneak up on you.

Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.

What kind of life am i supposed to have without you?You were the one good thing,the only good thing i ever found.

Clinton's resilience became sort of the secret weapon of the campaign. He was never going to just give up and get out.

The truth was that for some months he had been going through that partitioning of the things of youth wherein it is decided whether or not to die for what one no longer believes.

The dangerous falls were the ones that happened so fast you didn't have time to react

Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.

I don't write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in 'Stiff,' I wanted to change people's hearts about organ donation. Whenever I get a chance, I try to talk about that.

When there is no place that you have decided to call your own, then no matter where you go, you are always heading home.

Even more importantly, it's wine, food and the arts. Incorporating those three enhances the quality of life.

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.