“Mama says it's okay to be on the quiet side—if quiet means you're listening, watching, taking it all in.”

“My mamma says I shouldn't go on the other side".... My mama says the same thing. But she never said nothing about sitting on it”

“Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?”

“No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.”

“You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross.”

“You're a part of me...You're in my heart. Forever and always, all right? —D”

“Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.”