organization is the religion of the single parent.

...our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.

After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.

Once the rains abated, my father's garden thrived in the heat like an unleashed temper.

A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.