I'm interested in how the confessional is so abrasively critiqued today. I'm not really comfortable with simply confessing but I do think "confessing" is a major part of reckoning.

I'm not good enough as a person and definitely not good enough as a writer.

I'm also, than anything else, a teacher and a student. And without the four hours, I'm pretty monsterish. For real.

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.

I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach.

I'm a black writer from Mississippi. That's what I most consider myself.

I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.

Long Division has a lot of Afrosurrealist impulses. I think the book was more Afrofuturist when it was like 700 pages.

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause.

Obama will win. We will win. Then we will continue to lose. And the right questions will never be honestly asked or answered, and it's all just too much.

Your letter reminds me that any love that necessitates deception is not love. It doesn't matter if that supposed love is institutional or personal.

It is strange how often a heart must be broken Before the years can make it wise.

Show Goodness Onto The World And The World Will Show Goodness Onto You.

Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.

I am an actress and acting is my passion... period!

The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken.

Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors.

An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.

You're an idiot. Study harder.

Art helped give me confidence.

Hold the door for an old man. Old ladies can take care of themselves; they've been doing it long enough.