When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.

If there was ever a time to boil up some grits it is now.

I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now, where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives.

Remember that the writing itself is good for you. If your story is so close to home that you are afraid to write it, it probably means you need to write it.

I take mentoring very seriously and as a result I hardly get any work done during the school year.

This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

Abandonment doesn't have the sharp but dissipating sting of a slap. It's like a punch to the gut, bruising your skin and driving the precious air from your body.

My first novel, Leaving Atlanta, took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.

It's funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.

When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.

Whatever kind of seed is sown in a field, prepared in due season, a plant of that same kind, marked with the peculiar qualities of the seed, springs up in it.

Sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that we give him no cause for envy.

Our leaders will serve the common good with better laws and better actions only when we serve it first, by casting better votes.

I'm continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.

I have a bad back partially from playing the drums and singing. I used to have to hold my body in such a position that my spine got out of alignment.

Men are in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create.

It's not in the dreaming, it's in the doing.

Enemy images are the main reason conflicts don't get resolved.

Titles or awards are not the mark of your success. They are the beginning of a life-long sadhana.

Over the last 15 years we've developed our brand into a global brand and we wanted our giving to follow suit.