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

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.

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.

When I look out the window, I exhale a prayer of thanks for the color green, for my children's safety, for the simple acts of faith like planting a garden that helped see us through another spring, another summer. And I inhale some kind of promise to protect my kids' hopes and good intentions we began with in this country. Freedom of speech, the protection of diversity - these are the most important ingredients of American civil life and my own survival. If I ever took them for granted, I don't know.

It is completely usual for me to get up in the morning, take a look around, and laugh out loud.