“I cannot unravel the difference between love in my family and the preparation of food because they are so closely woven.”

I love actors and I love to create an environment where they feel safe to connect and thrive and try things.

Some artists never see their work in front of an audience.

Women move through the world never knowing their power.

With full knowledge that the person you married has agreed.

We girls, on the other hand, aim really high. We take a leap.

And I knew that the roots of imagery were the senses – and that if my readers could feel.

I love rhinestones, faux jewelry.

The most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather.

Food was celebration, conversation, and nourishment.

One person is all it takes to give a kid confidence.

I am in total silence when I write.

You can’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow or a year from now.

I look at my roommates who are so proud of me that it makes me proud.

And so, when I was a young writer I always worked hard on imagery.

When people are filled to the brim with love, they are their most beautiful.

They figure out what you need and they give it to you – without you asking.

I suppose that what I would want to acknowledge is that perhaps the tension, the crucial tension, isn’t necessarily between the view of bullfighting as a tradition versus as an art form, but between the values inside the ring and the values outside the ring.

The peacemakers shall be called the sons of God, who came to make peace between God and man. What then shall the sowers of discord be called, but the children of the devil? And what must they look for but their father’s portion?

How many husbands were floating between life and death, clinging to their wives in this world? And how may millions and millions of people were there in the world like Charlie who wouldn’t let go of their loved ones when they’re gone?

158 Lewis Avenue between Lafayette and Van Buren, that was back durin days of hangin’ on my bed-stuy block

And once they start to think about the consequences, they almost always calm down. Unless they’re drunk, of course. Or stoned. Or aged between fourteen and twenty-one. Or Glaswegian.

There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that’s in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.

The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.

Between the mouth and the morsel many things may happen.