The writing can be its own reward, as you discover more things that you can do. It counts a lot, though, when a story connects with a reader and they take the time to tell me about it.

Don't write poems to make girls like you, because it will not make them like you but it will give them something to quote back at you later in life.

I'm a plotter. A thinker, a note-maker, a mapper and a flow-charter. I'm up for using any device that will teach me more about the people I'm writing about and their story.

I actually find it pretty tedious when magazines ask me to write articles based on my real life, because I've already lived it and there's nothing new to discover. So, I'm unlikely to write a memoir.

I want my fiction to feel real most of the time, so it makes sense to pay attention to life and to how people work.

We are all poets, really.

My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.

Even though that God didn't bring you on earth to turn you into a failure, He still expects you to always do your best before He can do the rest for you.

Hunger allows no choiceTo the citizen or the police

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

God has a most wicked sense of humor.

Poverty has a home in Africalike a quiet second skin.It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with unconscious dignity.

Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.

If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind that it will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.

People will buy anything that is one to a customer.