I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.

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.

A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

A woman shouldn't heckle. In the public eye, you have to represent not only you but your spouse, too. You have to be a lady. She just has to sit there, clap, and look pretty.

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean . . .

It's like these songs are your babies and you don't want anybody to think your babies are ugly! You never really know until you throw it out there if it's gonna take.

I can't sing anything other than country!

I just really love doing what I do. I know every career is fleeting and there will be time periods when I don't get the opportunities that I'm getting right now, so I am taking advantage of them.

I'm a Capricorn, and they flower late.

Eventually you just have to realize that you're living for an audience of one. I'm not here for anyone else's approval.

I think the hero in our generation is not the individual but the pair, two people who together add up to more than they are apart.