I've always been a writer who tackles complex themes and risky subjects - I write about the things that people think but never say aloud.

My only relief is to sleep. When I'm sleeping, I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm not lonely, I'm nothing.

Sometimes you have to say, 'Today's just not my day.

To be honest, I want readers to be wrung out. As a novelist, I don't have a political agenda or specific philosophy; I'm trying to create a gut-wrenching, intimate, memorable experience.

My entire life has been centered around my writing, and by that I mean finding the time to write.

Part of what compels me to write day after day, chapter after chapter, is the discovery process, seeing the characters evolve as I get deeper and deeper into the story.

What I like to do and what I have to do are two separate things. I like to read, swim, watch TV, spend time with my family. But I have to work, so I do that.

To be perfectly frank: I don't write women's fiction. I write intimate, gritty, realistic, character-driven fiction that happens to be thrown into the women's fiction category.

I think there's an unnatural amount of social pressure on women, particularly mothers, to conform to certain standards of behavior, particularly in regard to our children.

I love it, I hate it, it's ecstasy when I'm writing well, it's despair when I'm not. I wouldn't wish this life on anyone, nor would I, could I, ever give it up.

I hope I'll keep people up at night, unable to stop turning pages. That's my goal: exhausted, emotionally drained readers who can't stop crying.

Coercing attitude drains your strength.

Uncle Drew shouts. “You are a disgrace. Your mother should have swallowed.

Never fall for anyone. It's only sadness that is gifted by them to you in your rest of the life.Kills the loving person inside you.

Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

We have not been energetic enough - white people haven't - in pursuing racial equity.

Faith is a mockery if it does not teach us that we can build a more complete and beautiful world.

Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value or virtue in unemployment.

I would give my best quartet for a good razor.

When I got back into the film business after college, I started out as a production assistant.

Do everything you do to the glory of the One who made you