Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

No song or poem will bear my mother's name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother's stories.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

As an elder of the Americas and of the rest of the planet, it is my responsibility to care for and protect, to the best of my ability, the young.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Anything that forces you to act at the possible harm of your own existence is going to exact a cost. You have to then think about, "Can I pay this? What will this mean to me - to my relationships, to my family, to everybody? What is this going to take? How much of me is this going to take?"

The Congo is really beautiful. People correct me and say, "Oh, you mean the Democratic Republic of the Congo." Well, fine. But, the land there, the landscape is extraordinary. It's big lakes and beautiful hills and trees.