I wanted to be a scientist. But I had no math skills.

We’re all misfits herefrom our weirdnesses and our differences, from our manic fixations, our obsessions, our passions. From all those wild and wacky things that make each of us unique.

What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

I'm also looking for gems that the average reader might have missed.

Happiness is a talent like any other. It's another art form. Some people are good at it, some people aren't.

The fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is inward, into the lands of the soul.

I'd had no particular interest in the Southwest at all as a young girl, and I was completely surprised that the desert stole my heart to the extent it did.

Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around.

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…) A good novel editor is invisible.

We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

Do not allow yourself to be pulled into the role of embracing victimship as some sort of badge of honor to wear or flash around at any opportunity.

Work with great zeal.

The greatest achievement is self discovery.

I advise you to be suspicious of any black American whose family does not claim a blood connection to Native Americans. That’s a clear sign of a racial infiltrator who has not done enough research.

Sometimes we ask God for help and God gives us hope, not because it's different, but because it's the same.

I've always been pretty good at remembering the details about certain things.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

I was kind of lost for several years.

If one person gains spiritually, the whole world gains

I will smile at friend and foe alike and make every effort to find, in him or her, a quality to praise, now that I realize the deepest yearning of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.