In America you make your plans and then they happen.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work.

I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

If somebody says your story is only published because you look nice in the photo, that maybe spurs you on to write.

She carried a thousand lights inside her heart, and a thousand lights carried her.

It's not like I have the most perfect body in the world. I'm a normal girl.

Islands are reminders of arrivals and departures.

It is grievous to be caught.

Maybe probably ain’t all that comforting a word when it’s maybe yer not dying.

The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

As an actor, I was taught, from an early age, that secrets are the most powerful thing that you can have on screen, and that what you withhold is as important as what you share.

The red sands of Marrakesh, sprawling at the foot of the Atlas like a wounded Leviathan.

South African rugby doesn't have to stand back for anyone.

Help and not fight. Assimilation and not destruction. Harmony and Peace and not dissension.