My maternal grandmother, Annie Sparks, lived with our family during the while I was growing up. When I came home from school, after having made a detour to the kitchen to pour a glass of milk and fix a thick peanut butter sandwich on easy-to-tear white bread, I would go up to her sitting room.

Every spring, I begin cutting my firewood for the upcoming winter. It should be cut months ahead of time so it will dry and cure.

The Ozarks are old and worn mountains from the geological past.

Greer is Missouri's second-largest spring. It is a place of pounding, frothing waters and of greeny-cool moss-covered rock, a place of fern and cliffy splendor.

I have a weird vision of relationships because my parents have known each other since second grade, and they got married right out of college.

I would love to do a romantic comedy.

I invented the psychological histories and the relationship between Jack and Susan Stanton. I didn't know anything about the Clintons. I don't know more about the Clintons' marriage than you do.

At only 20 years old I got married. I was still a kid myself, but in those times, if you got someone pregnant, you had no choice but to get married. So I left school and the only thing I could do was sing.