“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?”

“It seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that's the way the world worked—people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can't have everything you want at the same time.”

“And when I can't speak it, I write it down. I wish I was different. Wish I was taller, smarter, could talk out loud the way I write things down. I wish I didn't always feel like I was on the outside, looking in like a Peeping Tom.”

“I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink - it's gone.”

“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”

“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.”

“Everything and everyone seemed like it was part of a long-ago time—when I was young and free and living.”