And I've teamed up with a choir from home. They're called the Gori Women's Choir. They're a 23-piece all-female choir, and they've been going since the '70s.

I love the French philosophy that everything starts with great-looking skin.

I think singing is such an important and incredible art form and it is quite undervalued at times.

Most people in Georgia have a place in the hills for when it gets too hot in the city. We have good friends who own a place by a beautiful little river and the houses are full of hammocks.

I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor.

On some level, acting is the art of pretend, and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there, no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio.

Thank God for jazz. It gave black women what film and theater gave white women: a well-lighted space where they could play with roles and styles, conduct esthetic experiments and win money and praise.

When a series is doing well, it's very tempting to keep writing it, even when the creative well is drying up. It's tempting because that's where the money is. I've had to be very careful; as soon as I think I'm getting close to that dry well, I wrap the series up. I don't want to just keep writing something because it sells.