The thing you can count on in life is that Tennessee will always be scorching hot in August.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer. You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person. You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

When you get divorced and remarried, nobody gets discarded. Everybody is still there. Even if their storyline is not directly yours.

Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

You can’t pick up and leave everything behind because there is too much sadness in the world and not enough places to go.