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" Reading was a huge part of my life as a child - we were a family of storytellers. "

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" I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities. "

" Giving voice to marginalised characters is extremely important to me. I want to explore the pain of disenfranchisement, the social strata and boundaries we create and how to make them more permeable. "

" 'Traveling with Pomegranates' is a very personal, very honest story about my relationship with my daughter and Ann's with her mother. "

" Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart. "

" I read usually in the morning, in my kitchen at breakfast - a short reading time, usually poetry. I read in bed every night. I usually get in bed pretty early with a book, and I read until I can't prop my eyes open anymore - sometimes rather late. "

" It's always been my hope that I would write a story that would inspire and would connect with people in a way that would touch hearts. "

" I feel like we need to be aware of the ways we use and misuse religious dogma: whether it takes us deeper into love and inclusion or it separates us. "

" I think there must be a place inside of us where dreams go and wait their turn. "

" Due to the sweeping time frame and the voices moving back and forth, the outline for 'The Invention of Wings' was the strangest one I've ever done. I created six large, separate outlines, one for each part of the book, and hung them around my study. "

" I knew from reading about Sarah Grimke that she'd been given a handmaid to be her personal slave and that her name was Hetty. The only other fact I knew about her was that Sarah taught her to read: They conspired in a very subversive way, by locking the door and screening the keyhole. "

" I had begun to write novels because of a fierce, self-serving impulse in my own heart. I had not considered the potential in a book for felt communion, the bright largesse of intimately participating in the lives of other people. "

" Gradually it occurred to me that we spend a great deal of life asleep and that dreams are little narratives, little stories. I thought, 'Who's choreographing this stuff?' "

" With pencil, you can always erase. "

" I actually grew up in a house in which bees lived in one of the walls, and they lived there 18 years, in fact, so it wasn't a fleeting thing. "

" I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play. It transcends the ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic 'I' within - an 'I Am,' or divine spark within the soul. "

" I want to believe that while we may sometimes read in the misguided pursuit of preserving our separation, there is a greater impulse inside us that compels us to read in search of the common heart. "

" A lot of time you write out of some unconscious place. I try to trust what is coming and where it wants to take me. "

" I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to. "

" I write in a journal occasionally. But it is not a daily discipline for me. "

" We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way. "

" I have an old dog named Lily, and she's a black lab. "

" I prefer to read print books. Maybe I'm just a little old-school. I do read e-books. "

" On weekends, I sit in a lounge chair on my balcony. I love to be outside when the weather's right. I can stay there pretty much all day. "

" I grew up in Georgia, in a small town in the southwest corner of Georgia, actually, called Sylvester. "

" I got my Bachelor's degree in nursing and worked nine years - even taught nursing in a college - before I stopped and said to myself, 'This is not who I am. I am not really a nurse inside. I'm a writer.' "

" I'm always captivated by stories of women who find a way to be daring - misbehaving women. "

" 'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story. "

" I think the word 'freedom' is beautiful, not so much in its phonics, but just in the power of the word itself. "

" I do read a poem almost every morning. Unless I'm really, really late, I have to get my poem in. "

" All I knew about bees when I started to write 'The Secret Life of Bees' was that they can live in a wall of your house, and that they make this incredible thing that I loved. "