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.

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.

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.

No one really knows why humans do what they do.

Little things done with love are better than big things without love.

Slow and steady wins the race.

God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.

The primary purpose of life is in being in the NOW.

Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.

Customers should be number 1, Employees number 2, and then only your Shareholders come at number 3.

Other people's belief changes you. We all have insecurity, and uncertainty, and to have that glow cast over you by somebody that you respect, makes a gigantic difference.

Dogs with broken legs are shot; men with broken souls write through the night.

I'm not a film snob at all. I much prefer a really good Hollywood blockbuster than a thought-provoking art house movie because entertainment is sort of where it's at.