When I was 5 years old, my mother read me 'Gone With The Wind' at night, before I went to bed. I remember her reading almost all year.

I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

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

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.

Once he had drawn first blood, his war against the property of the state lost all its moral resonance.

My mother raised me to be a writer.