I do have a sister - I have two sisters.

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.

May you find much more grace for everyday life.

Let's not cry about it, shall we, Marcy? Let's pray about it instead.

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America but the business and administrative centre of American culture.

If God had wanted us to play football in the sky, He'd have put grass up there.

For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone.

Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.

I have been dying for twenty years, now I am going to live.

You are a cosmic happening rooted in a local event, NOT the other way around.

Success? Odd as it seems, you will achieve the greates results in business and career if you drop the word 'achievement' from your vocabulary and replace it with 'contribution'.

I'm getting too elderly to travel the length of the country for a free hangover.