“Before Hurricane Katrina, I always felt like I could come back home. A...” — Jesmyn Ward Quote

Before Hurricane Katrina, I always felt like I could come back home. And home was a real place, and also it had this mythical weight for me. Because of the way that Hurricane Katrina ripped everything away, it cast that idea in doubt.

After I finished my first draft of 'Salvage the Bones,' I felt that I wasn't political enough. I had to be more honest about the realities of the community I was writing about.

My mom worked as a housekeeper, and I saw her relationship with her employers - how on the one hand she spent more time with these women than with a lot of her friends, and how in certain ways they were friends. But then they weren't.

Faulkner is a really important figure in southern literature. I wrestle with him and his legacy every time I sit down and write a piece of fiction.

To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I'm in exactly the same place I was when I left home - that, to me, is a miracle.

For all practical purposes I left home when I was 7.

At the World Cup and at national team camps it's hard. Everyone wanted me to go back home and play for their team.

I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.

If I wanted to lay down a baby con, I could say I was the product of a broken home. But I'd only be bum-rapping my parents.