"Girl, Interrupted. I love the book that it’s based on; it’s one of my favorites. It’s really short, and I just think that it’s a beautiful story. I love everyone in it. I loved Brittany Murphy, I loved Angelina Jolie, Winona Ryder. So that’s one of my favorites."

"This classic collection of short stories is about a character dealing with addiction, but Johnson masterfully elucidates the "spirit" component of alcoholic "spirits": His writing is almost otherworldly in its attunement to what's below surfaces, gliding into these spaces with words that capture our most nuanced internal states"

"Written after the end of WWI, which upended the globe, but set in 1901 in a provincial town where nothing, nothing, nothing at all can change, this enchanting, witty, shattering, profoundly compassionate fable-like short novel seems to contain all the world’s pain in an iridescent soap-bubble."

"I first read this short story collection many years ago and it has stayed with me. I was struck by the title, and then the stories, each focused on black girls and women, the worlds of those stories fully realized and held carefully in Johnson’s very talented hands"