There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.

Being an unpublished novelist has about as much social acceptability as being a shopping bag lady.

I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years.

I always wanted to be the outlaw. And that's to a certain extent how I've lived.

When I started writing 'A Million Little Pieces,' I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.

I will not allow people to impose rules on me that don't make sense to me. And I live and work very much outside the literary world and the literary system. What they think and what they believe and what their rules are mean nothing to me.

I stand, walk over to him, sit down on his bed, put my arms around him, hug him. He hugs me back strong and I can feel the shame coming through his arms. I am a Criminal and he is a Judge and I am white and he is black, but at this moment none of that matters. He is a man who needs a friends and I can be his friend.