Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.

Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.

I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.

When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.

I am not myself; I am the potential of myself.

Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance.

Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.