I don't want it to be all that self-conscious or artificial, but it really grows out of my having invented myself as a listener so that I could hear her voice.

John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.

And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.

As an artist, I don't care about where we are in the charts and all that. The important thing to me is to connect with a creative project.

There are different types of talents and intelligences, and traditional schools sometimes ignore the creative ones. It is important for us to give kids every platform for them to find what they are good at and what they love. The arts also provide a space for newfound creativity.

Most cocktails containing liquor are made today with gin and ingenuity. In brief, take an ample supply of the former and use your imagination. For the benefit of a minority, it is courteous to serve chilled fruit juice in addition to cocktails made with liquor.

My mother had no idea that her daughter would turn out to be a writer, but she would not let me go through a day of my childhood without music.