Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin.

Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.

When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to prevail; they fear someone else will get their piece of the pie.

From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.

We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.

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