There was a boy in my building who was my best friend when I was growing up. There was also a mysterious person on my corner who we called the Laughing Man.

I think that's one of the most important things that books do: not to teach you anything, but to help you teach yourself by just being in the world of the book and having your own thoughts and reactions and noticing your own reactions and thoughts and learning about yourself that way.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

I think things hit me very hard, and I wish I had allowed things to roll off my back a little bit more.

The single best indicator of whether or not a child is going to be in poverty or not is whether or not they were raised by a two-parent household or a single parent household.

I feel that certain things are best kept inside a family and not discussed with anyone else.

A lot of the major players in the 1960s were the same as the 1940s and 1950s - Hitchen's 'Sleep with Slander.' Armstong's 'Lemon in the Basket,' which is a fusion of the political assassination thriller and a family drama. And Hughes's 'The Expendable Man.'

When you're pregnant, things - at least for me - get very sincere and very wholesome, and it's about family, and singing becomes about warmth.