I raised five children. They all have different personalities. All of them have different issues, different levels of success. That was a learning experience for me.

We cannot embrace God's forgiveness if we are so busy clinging to past wounds and nursing old grudges.

Forgiveness is about empowering yourself, rather than empowering your past.

I like to see myself as a bridge builder, that is me building bridges between people, between races, between cultures, between politics, trying to find common ground.

As a novelist, where do you go to tap into memories, and impressions, and sensations? It's usually, in my experience, your early life, before you started thinking of yourself as a writer, because somehow those experiences are unadulterated.

A song has a life of its own. It's an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it's subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn't feel like wallowing.

I am livid with rage, sitting here in chains through this mad war which kills any meaning of life... My nerves are shattered and my mind darkened.

All those lessons that I've learned on the court, I have applied them to my life outside of the court in business, my company, called V Starr interiors, an interior design company, and EleVen, which I wear on court.