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

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.

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.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

It is always those closest to us who can cut us the deepest.

There was no necessity for either to have the last word. For the first word became the only word of their romantic conversation.

I didn't truly understand the depth of my roots until I was old enough to wonder and care.

When you have life, you can weather any storm. You're breathing. You have life.

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

I squirrel away sealed greeting cards that people give me so I can open them later when I'm having a bad day.

There is no inborn longing that shall not be fulfilled. I think that is as certain as the forgiveness of sins.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there's any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

No one deserves to be whipped like an animal.

The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.