Author Quotes

Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature.

My first novel, 'Leaving Atlanta,' took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.

I was kind of an invisible girl when I was young.

I think the NAACP isn't recognized enough for all of the work it does, especially in the field of law. They may have faded from view over the last couple of decades, but they are fighting the good fight.

I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now, where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives.

I take mentoring very seriously and as a result I hardly get any work done during the school year.

I like straightforward names for my characters. When I get too symbolic with names or places, I start feeling like the characters and the story are less read, and I lose interest.

I don't mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn't a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mist

I do have a sister - I have two sisters.

I am always urging my students to honor their writing practice, to set up a schedule.

Adolescence is a modern construct and very American in so many ways.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.