For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

Eventually I knew what hair wanted; it wanted to be itself ... to be left alone by anyone, including me, who did not love it as it was.

My ancestors make up the skin of the world. That's who that is. That's what that is. That's us.

Whoever you are, whatever you are, start with that, whether salt of the earth or only white sugar.

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.