It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.

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.

To tell the truth days are all the same size and words aren't much company.

What would have been the effect upon religion if it had come to us through the minds of women?

Describing yourself by your earthly nativity is carnality. Being born again, your nativity is of divinity.

All the parts of us that we ever were are always going to be with us. You make space to carry them and you just try not to let them drive. But you can't chuck them out either.

I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.

An awakened people who rely upon their nonviolent strength are independent in the face of any conceivable combination of the armed powers.

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.

Never be hurried out of the relationship of abiding in Him.

No matter what you achieve in life, you're always wondering, 'Is there something I should be doing? Is there something I'm missing?

I do not need wireless access to Wikipedia. I would prefer to stir-fry my own small intestines than to have continual access to a site where the entry for Klingon is longer than the entry for Latin.