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.

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 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.

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.

You need to remember, he told her, that you don't have another life in the bank. You got to make the most of the one you're living right now. - Old Man Crow

There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.

... you're never alone if you've got a book for company.

No one ever drowned in sweat.

Just as the poet is a menace to conformity, he is also a constant threat to political dictators. He is always on the verge of blowing up the assembly line of political power.

Nearly unable to bear the thought of how much he needed her quiet strength, he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cold glass.

I am extremely lucky; I've never been ill - although about 20 years ago I broke my right arm hang gliding.

Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit.

Now it's closing time/the music's fading out.

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.