Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go..

I didn't really expect to be coming to the Oscars..

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take….

I'm not one of these people who thinks everyone born into privilege should wear sack cloth and ashes. But it's something I wrestle with. I know a lot….

I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different..

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks redden….

A person has to show some spirit -- fate just about never shines on chickenshits..

I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such..

There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there..

I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked..

The opening novel of the 'Bayou Trilogy' was the first one I finished..

But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction..

I've bumped into at least three people in town who all insist 'Winter's Bone' is about them..

Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could..

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spin….

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered..

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall..

The heart makes dreams seem like ideas..

It's not always to the benefit of the story to have it so preordained..

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever..

For a long time, I thought you could remain isolated and survive, and I didn't want to change that. But over the last three or four books, I've becom….