Inevitably we start by thinking that if our work is any good, we'll get money. It's as we would if you started up a business or if you work in another profession.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

Forgiving is easier when we understand that forgiving someone else means that we are freeing ourselves of an unnecessary burden.

In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.

Honestly, if you were any slower, you’d be going backward.

Marriage is the most expensive ticket to nowhere

Apparently, I'm supposed to be more angry about what Mitt Romney does with his money than what Barack Obama does with mine.

Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

I was starstruck and sweat a lot when I met Oprah Winfrey and tried to hug her. Because when you think you know people when you see them from your couch.

I don't really plan. I just see what happens.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.