I've always thought Harper Lee might have made a great decision. Much as you'd like to have more books by her, there's something about just one that's kind of mysterious and nice. On the other hand, the New York gossip about me was that I'd never write another book. So I thought, 'Well, I will then.'

So even very young she saw slavery as an ancient practice arising because rich people would rather not do hard work, and also from the tendency of people to clench hard to advantageous passages in the Bible and dismiss the rest.

In her heart, though, she wondered, Is anything remembered forever?

Some far day when she had become a better person and could feel something besides stinging anger that her beautiful, gentle sister had not protected herself more carefully against a world of threat.

It does your mind good to talk to people different from you.

Writing doesn’t come real easy to me. I couldn’t write a novel in a year. It wouldn’t be readable. I don’t let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

The instant passed so fast, and when that happens, it goes for good and all you have is a slow lifetime to speculate on revisions.

If every generation helps the next take one step up, imagine where we might all be someday.

Inhuman, V says. But that’s an easy word. We’ve been doing that sort of thing to each other all through history, back past the Pyramids. Humans are inhuman, whether it’s by direct action or by acceptance of a horrible action as normal.

He said, I’ve been coming for you on a hard road. I’m never letting you go. Never.