Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.

But you cannot know a place without loving it and hating it and feeling everything in between. You cannot understand a complex people by only looking at data—something inside you has to crack to let in the light so your eyes and brain and heart can adjust properly.

Maybe all the secrets of life were written on the surface of leaves, waiting to be translated. If I touched them long enough, I might be given some information no one else had.

Now I had seen the grief of the two strongest people I knew. And somehow, Daddy's and Edie's crying made them seem even stronger to me. It was better to cry than to suck it up and go around conjuring hate in your heart

In New York, the buildings are like mountains in some ways, but they are only alive because of the people living in them. Real mountains are alive all over.

Because they [Americans] want to be thought of as a rich nation, they are very ashamed of this place [Appalachia] that has come to represent poverty, even though poverty exists all over the country, and exists as much in urban areas as it does in rural, if not more.

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.