My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.

Our society teaches a woman at a certain age who is unmarried to see it as a deep personal failure. While a man at a certain age who is unmarried has not quite come around to making his pick.

The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.

We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.