My Life in CIA is the first time that I've ever written a story in my own name.
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
I take in a lot of stuff from real life, movies, television, news and it all gets mixed in my head and somehow turns into a story idea.
What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.
I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.
I wrote my first books when I was single and then I got married and then had a kid and there were different things happening in my life.
I can't imagine not reporting. It's such a habit of mind for me, I do it even in my social life. If I'm nervous at a party, I just start interviewing people.
I love the village in my computer. There's little validation in the day-to-day life of a writer; sometimes we ache for a connection.
The human race is intoxicated with narrow victories, for life is a string of them like pearls that hit the floor when the rope breaks, and roll away in perfection and anarchy.
One of the things I worked very hard on all my life was to be like everyone else. I tried very hard to fit in.
I don't remember being a child, and that's why I think I'm so child-like now in my unending curiosity and approach to life.
Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell.
For years, I've felt an obligation to harvest an animal, since all my life I've so mindlessly consumed them. But that was from the safety of my desk.
The written word is the only anchor we have in life. How extraordinary would it be if we had even three or four paragraphs written honestly about their lives by our ancestors?
I believe that illness has led me to a life of gratitude, so I consider Lyme disease at this point in my life to be a blessing in disguise.
It is one of the ironies of my life and in many lives that whenever you are the happiest, all of this stuff from the past will come pushing up and demand to be noticed.
While books provided me with some escape from the mental and physical horrors of my early life, they were unreliable. Many times the protagonists suffered terribly and then died at the end.
I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.
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.
The spiritual reality of the Indian world is very evident, very highly developed. I think it affects the life of every Indian person in one way or another.
Life on Mars would be awesome! Even single-celled life, although I admit that in my heart of hearts, I want it to be the barge-people of the canals.
