I think the writer's job is to paint the gray because no life is clearly defined.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

The key to your success on planet earth is to find the field where your gift would be of the highest benefit

There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.

The chance to own a home; chance to own an education; chance to get access to capital. This is the real civil rights battle of the twenty-first century.

Walk my way and a thousand violins begin to play, or it might be the sound of your hello.

Learn to be calm and you will always be happy.

She was so fat that her clothes are made by Omar the tent maker.

That's what the news is: You turn on the news every night, whatever you watch, and you're expecting to see things that you didn't know happened. And that's not what it is.

It's just the way things are." she shrugged. "It's no one's fault." "Or everyone's.

I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.

What is deferred is not avoided.