You know, I once read a short story about how much you could tell about people from their shoes. You could tell where they had been, what they did, whether they were real walkers.

I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University of North Carolina for three years.

My job as the mother of daughters is to make sure my children see that every opportunity is available to them.

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.

This diagnosis is a reminder that this is the life you've got. And you're not getting another one. Whatever has happened, you have to take this life and treasure and protect it.

It's just a part of our nature to hope.

... all things are possible if you are willing to put yourself on the line. You cannot stand back and hope for the best. You have to act.

You recognize a survivor when you see one. You recognize a fighter when you see one.

A lot of people have great hope, and a lot of people who have great hope live. And, some of them who have great hope die. So it's not that hope is going to save you.

Tabloid news is tabloid news.

We were never a family that had a lot. We had enough, but not a lot.

If you do not have the strength to forgive, then compel themselves and continue in that, do not write bad words.For all that you write, is your own burden, you're gonna wear.So just write nice!

The broken ones need someone to fight for them even harder.

Oh my god will you shut the front door already!

All good, clean stories are melodrama, it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

And make death proud to take us.

If you're writing on your own, each character is just you. It's just you.

The absent partie is still faultie.

I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations.

Yes, living voices in a living language, so it seemed to us.

My parents were political, so it's definitely in my bones. Wherever I am, I always seem to get involved with politics. I think, once it's in your bloodstream, it's always there. I love it.