Wherever there's a prison, for the most part, especially where there's Black people, it's overcrowded. I don't know who really gets out.

I'm the only one who can stop me.. I'm the one who's been sitting at the stoplight all these years, waiting for the light to turn green.

Writing is my shelter. I don't hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth.

If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.

Pay attention to the things that agitate you. It will tell you a lot about yourself.

It's amazing how we can make ourselves believe what we want to.

People like to run their mouths.

Writing is the only place I can be myself and not feel judged.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

As a writer, you get to bring attention to something without preaching. I don't believe in being didactic. So if you dramatize something, you automatically bring attention to it if people read it.

I'm more interested in interpersonal relationships - between lovers families, siblings. That's why I write about how we treat each other.

Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed.

Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.

A woman the more careful she is about her face is commonly the more careless about her house.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

You may have the worst timing since Napoleon decided the dead of winter was the right moment to invade Russia.

Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency on a grander scale. Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history.

The national media are doing everything they can to suppress bad news about Hillary Clinton and everything they can to maximize bad news about Donald Trump.

When you've got kids, it's a big undertaking. It's like doing four movies in a row.

I don’t know if you have a child, but what the Chinese government want people to see is like you would want a child to see. Because every film shown in China is one that a child could see.