Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don't think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year.

I just finished Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad," which I think is a work of genius.

There was the blue sky above her and all those many roses, the ones that gave off the scent of cloves in the rain and the ones that left a trace of lemon on your fingers, the ones that were the color of blood, and those that were as white as clouds. Each one was sweeter than the next and as red as gemstones.

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head

Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place, I said... And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won't have to run all the rest of your life?... We love moment to moment... Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea.

My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.