Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.

My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.

As a novelist, there are three phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime because if you waited for them you would grow despairing - one calling from Stockholm with a Swedish accent, one from the NBA, and one from Oprah Winfrey.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?).

He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.

No one said living isn't a pretty chancy business, Sibyl. No one gets out of here alive.