People have to be given permission to write, and they have to be given space to breathe and stumble. They have to be given time to develop and to reveal what they can do.

The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I've seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges.

(M)aybe we too busy being flowers or fairies or strawberries instead of something honest and worthy of respect . . . you know . . . like being people.

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.... We'd better take the time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, revolutionary relationships. Mouth don't win the war.

Writing is a legitimate way, an important way, to participate in the empowerment of the community that names me.

The only proper mask to wear in life is your own damn face.

TAKE HEART TO FLAT OUT DECIDE TO BE WELL AND STRIDE INTO THE FUTURE, SANE AND WHOLE

The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible.

When you dream, you dialogue with aspects of yourself that normally are not with you in the daytime and you discover that you know a great deal more than you thought you did.

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.

Nothing in human life least of all in religion is ever right until it is beautiful.

The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

Digital held no romance for me at all. I hated it. I miss my big cameras. The working process, I miss it.

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

After desolation, grief brings back our humanity.

There is no substitute for intuition.

Honesty, by evil fortune tried, Finds in adversity the seed of praise.

I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.

Once you go Kerry Washington, you can’t go back

In my mind, I always think of myself as an underdog type.