I've been told it's hard to write about singing. I didn't realize that going into it. I might not have tried if I knew!

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.

Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

I have lived for a long time inside a series of coincidences that most people would find implausible in a novel.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

I had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Sometimes when I remember we aren't the same person, it shocks me.

At one time through love all things come together into one, at another time through strife s hatred, they are borne each of them apart.

I do not know what I think until I write it.

The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.

I know people who are so immersed in road maps that they never see the countryside they pass through, and others who, having traced a route, are held to it as though held by flanged wheels to rails.

There are already a number of gatherings centered around women of color who are doing inspiring work.

There's nothing better than meeting somebody with a great soul, and a great spirit and a good heart.

I was on the show previously as a guest host, so I had a little practice.