By the numbers, by all the official records, here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing.

Grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief.

I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.

My father owned pit bulls when I was young. He sometimes fought them. My brother and a lot of the men in my community owned pit bulls as well: sometimes they fought them for honor, never for money.

While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.

I wanted to be my own heroine.

That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.

I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them.

I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African diaspora, people of this region, and throughout the south.

There is laughter, shrill calls. Everyone is flirting, saying in nudges and jokes and blushing what they would do in private

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?

Can a man's life be complete without his Maker?

What is it about us lady authors and our fascination for the exclamation mark?

This is pity, ” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.

I want to direct $10 billion to create a make it in America partnership to support American manufacturing.

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

I don't have to work. I suppose I should retire. But I enjoy working.

People see I am a mother and head of a household. Today in Chile, one-third of households are run by women. They wake up, take the children to school, go to work. To them I am hope.

In God's name cheerly on, courageous friends, To reap the harvest of perpetual peace By this one bloody trial of sharp war.