I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'

Migration gives a blank cheque to put anything you don't feel like addressing in the memory hold. No neighbours can go against the monster narrative of your family.

I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse.

The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.

Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.

She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.

If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level any reflection of themselves

We get these lives for free. I didn't do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it's an extraordinary bargain.

Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done.

I think the average guy thinks they're pro-woman, just because they think they're a nice guy and someone has told them that they're awesome. But the truth is far from it.

[Donald] Trump is taking America's dirty laundry to the center stage. Everything he does, the rest of the country already does really well: victimize immigrants, poor people, women.

Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.

There is no way to counterfeit courage

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

I love food and I love living.

No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.

It is always possible that occasional individuals may have overstepped the law and humanity in treatment of criminals and those charged with crime, and if so, they should be severely punished.

To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs.

People are experience-rich and theory-poor. I help people organize / make sense of their experiences.

As artists get wealthier and more famous, often their work gets worse... I'm fascinated by the decline of artists. I suspect I'll be in decline myself. It's a fact of life.

When you are reading a book in a dark room, and come to a difficult part, you take it to a window to get more light. So take your Bibles to Christ.