Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.

I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.

If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.

It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.

We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end.

Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.