I was kind of an invisible girl when I was young.

If there was ever a time to boil up some grits it is now.

I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now, where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives.

Remember that the writing itself is good for you. If your story is so close to home that you are afraid to write it, it probably means you need to write it.

When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.

I take mentoring very seriously and as a result I hardly get any work done during the school year.

This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

Abandonment doesn't have the sharp but dissipating sting of a slap. It's like a punch to the gut, bruising your skin and driving the precious air from your body.

My first novel, Leaving Atlanta, took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.

It's funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.

I had a dream that I saw shooting stars with you. Two things that will come close to never happening: Seeing shooting stars, and being with you.

You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty.

While she was light and sunshine, he was nothing but clouds and darkness.

The music teacher came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin.

Innovation is not the exclusive province of New Economy companies.

More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have been abused as children.

Plants and minerals are bound to predestination. The faithful is only bound to the Divine orders.

The most important questions of life are indeed, for the most part, really only problems of probability.

If you don't respect your time, no one will respect your time.

Nature's arena has a way of humbling and energizing us.