There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.

The pursuit of greatness means that laziness has no place in your life.

Some things don’t mix. Some things don’t mix at all, but sometimes in life you have to take the risk.

I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

Of the Yamacraw children, I can say little. I don't think I changed the quality of their lives significantly or altered the inexorable fact that they were imprisoned by the very circumstance of their birth.

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.