When you think of how a child experiences a series of events, it feels, for so long, like she's looking at everything from behind this glass and it's….

One place exists as their interpretation of it. For the people living and thriving inside of it, it's another place..

Seems like every time life starts straightening itself out, something's gotta go and happen..

Mainly, I try not to think about my readers as I write - I just think of my characters and myself - If they're interesting to me, my hope is that the….

I'm not afraid of silence. You know, I'm not afraid to sit in a room and have the conversation drop into silence. I think that's a very southern thin….

Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page..

I feel like so much of what I'm doing is making a road where there is no road and inviting people on that road with me. It's scary. It's scary, but I….

There is so much work left to be done in the world and for me, I am hoping to make the change I can and do the work I need to do through this gift I'….

I think in terms of being a New Yorker, as my friends would say, I don't take a lot of mess. I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deep….

That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear..

I think it's important to remember that writing is a gift and our stories are gifts to ourselves and to the world and sometimes giving isn't always t….

I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking..

Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might..

Where I grew up, it was all people who were black and Latino, people who look like me. Now I live in a neighborhood where very, very few people look ….

A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave ….

When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not ….

There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering..

I think people need to remember that a book isn't done after a few rewrites and a publisher isn't going to buy an 'undone' book so the hard part is m….

Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on..

I definitely believe in a greater good. I definitely believe that there's a reason each of us is here and that we've been brought here to do somethin….

You have those walls up all around you...Come a day you gonna want to tear them down brick by brick and gonna find that the cement is all hard. What ….