Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up.

Some things we must pass over in silence.

...the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.

Sooner or later. It had better be sooner. Later is like the horizon; it recedes as you approach.

My father has always been the heart of my Penn Cage novels.

My mother, a teacher, encouraged me to use my creativity as an actual way to make a living, and my father, a Mississippi physician, did two things. First, he taught me that all human beings should be treated equally because no one is better than anyone else, and he never pressured me to become a doctor.

Her touch was as knowing and confident as her eyes, and as she focused all her attention upon me, I remembered that there is nothing so thrilling as a woman of words when she decides that the time for words is past.