I don't know a country in the world that doesn't have borders and doesn't want to know who is coming into their country.

Taxpayers have long memories, especially when it comes to how their hard-earned money is spent.

Everybody who makes any kind of policy needs to substitute teach. But you've got to be a real teacher. You can't just go to a couple of classes with the regular teacher there. It is an incredibly hard job.

Some of my colleagues argue that by further curtailing our Second Amendment rights, they can enhance public safety. Fine, the burden of proof is on them.

In our country, being from immigrant parents, growing up black in the South, coming out at 16 years old, being a teen parent... you would assume that my life would amount to nothing. And here I stand today. So, if I can do it... you can, too!

My grandmother - my mother's mother - was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.

Although my father's mother, Nancy, has dementia, and her experiences gave me ideas for some of the scenes in the book, it was my mother's mother, Vera, who most influenced the character of Maud. Vera died in 2008, before I'd gotten very far into writing 'Elizabeth Is Missing,' but her voice is very like Maud's.

I felt it was terribly important, for Stephen and the children, to keep the family together.