As I detail in my new book: 'Hard Measures, How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,' there are many myths surrounding the detention of a relatively small number of top terrorists at CIA-run 'black sites' from 2002 until they were sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
You start thinking about a character in a new book, of course you're going to think pretty soon, 'Well, what's their secret? What is their problem?' Maybe, 'What is their secret?' is another way of saying, 'What is their problem?' There's got to be some issue, or you've got a totally boring book!
My biggest aspiration is to inspire people to do good. I believe that our wish for a harmonious world begins and ends with doing good. To inspire and empower people to focus on goodness, I wrote a new book called 'Activate Your Goodness: Transforming the World through Doing Good.'
If I had a personal wish for the new ideas in this new book it would be that every parent, every counselor, every teacher, every professor, every sports coach that deals with young people would understand the three circle concept.
It is such a luxury to open a new book that's highly recommended by friends - either an inspirational yet humorously self-deprecating memoir, or a page-turning piece of fiction.
Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.
It's going to be used in the last days to get people to come against Christ, and that's the issue: they come against the Lord Jesus Christ. And in this new book, we show Christ coming to settle that big issue.
Each new book is a tremendous challenge.
Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.
I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.