When you walk to the end of a fiction, its procedure is 1) intuitive; and 2) emotional. Its intelligence is emotional, I think.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

I usually feel something before I know it.

If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.

Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

Spiritual maturity is not defined by how well one applies Biblical principles to “suppress sin”.

Washington has a mysterious power to turn perfectly reasonable, wholesome, well-meaning human beings into equivocating crooked gasbags.

Life is short, yet sweet.

For a century, the Arabs tribes gave Islam the first of these victories. Then the rough mountain peoples of North Africa, the Berbers, helped it to conquer Spain and organize Fatimid Egypt.

We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.

I decided to come back and teach goodness in this business. To teach love, because music is the universal language. We are God's bouquet, and through music we become one.

I love a sense of humor, I love intelligence, I love specificity, I love surprises. I'm inspired to get out of bed in the morning and fill my day with good things.

Lovers have heartaches That can't be cured by drugs Or sleep, Or games, But only by seeing their beloved.

Cold glass, how you insert yourself Between myself and myself. I scratch like a cat. The blood that runs is dark fruit- An effect, a cosmetic. You smile. No, it is not fatal.

But, at the moment, when I step on the pitch, when I have the ball I know it's mine. It's just a feeling.