There seems to be a tremendous desire among many people now to know authors and how they work, to know what's autobiographical and what isn't.

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.

Goals for the future distract from worry and anger about the past and redirect your focus to the direction you're travelling in.

I've been active in animal rights and all kinds of environmental stuff and children's charities over the years.

When I was a teen, or like 18 to early 20s, I used to go to festivals all the time. I'd save all my money.

For men, it's necessary to push aside that marvelous ego that tells you that you are all knowing and capable, and see that you are not.

Back home in South Carolina, you have a lot of little soul food restaurants you can run to and get some quick, decent food.

I think the only way we retain credibility with the Arab world is to say, 'When push came to shove, despite the mistakes we made in the past, we are with you in democracy.'

There is no man on Earth or devil in Hell who can keep you from the very best God put in you.

Right from the start my parents had left me to fend for myself. Apparently unaware that I was a kid, they invariably treated me like an adult, perhaps because they themselves were no spring chickens.

Free your mind from the colonization of thinking within the obtuse parameters of 'right' and 'left', of conservatives and liberals.

Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.