"I grew up playing music and enjoying good food, friends and family in my own backyard."

"I could be on 52nd and Third in Manhattan up and ask a strange for directions and they will help you, that's a rural heart. Your car breaks down in the middle of Iowa or somewhere, or Tennessee where I'm from, people want to help each other. Given each opportunity, you see how people come together."

"I was a sickly baby, and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home, they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say, the third time's a charm, because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into their home where I was raised in a family full of love."

"When you're adopted, no matter what, you've got issues with unconditional love. And you find out you're the product of the worst situation for a young girl to be in and start her life, and I'm so grateful that my birth mom made the decision she made. She came from a rough situation."

"I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect."

"If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness."

"I listened to it last night for the first time since we started this project. I went out to my car and put it in and went to an empty parking lot and just listened and read the little pamphlet that came with it. After two or three songs I burst into tears."

"I can read and write. I went to school for six years. I just couldn't continue."