Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me.

I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern' novelist, with a strong emphasis on the word 'Southern' because 'Gone With the Wind' set my mother's imagination ablaze when she was a young girl growing up in Atlanta.

I told my kids when they were little, 'Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don't understand how, or we wouldn't do it. But we're parents. So somehow we're damaging you, and I want you to know that early. So just ignore me when I go to that part of my parenting.'

I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.

I worked with an indie filmmaker called Mark Williams, a lawyer who was making a zero-budget family drama called 'Move Me.'

I'm from a big family. I've got 10 nieces and nephews.

It was through the private world of family that the public world of politics came alive for me: living in intimate proximity with people for whom larger questions of ideology and belief, as well as issues relating to politics and governance, were vivid daily realities.

People are always asking me - because of my family - if I ever feel pressure or feel like I have something to live up to. And having that in the back of my head, I've just learned to be really brave even in the face of feeling ill-prepared.