They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds― cooled ―and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.

One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.