Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.
Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
When you’re given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven.
I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.
If you can’t dress expensive, dress memorable.
If the Lord hasn’t got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that’s his business.
How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.
Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.
Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.
This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.
No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won’t even stand close to the blade. I’m one of those. We don’t bend anything.
You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails.
Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.
I don’t bring expectations to any of my books. I don’t tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.
After ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.