My tendency is to want to say to the person, "Do you understand why I feel this way?" I usually do say that. And sometimes it doesn't go well. By this I mean we hit an impasse again. Not that I need to hear exactly what I want to hear, but I need to know I am heard. Those moments make for a better friendship. But I can't let it go. For good or bad.

For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under."

Sometimes the art pieces I gravitate toward speak to me in terms of narrative, at other times they speak to me in terms of mood.

Where is the safest place when that place / must be someplace other than in the body?

I wanted a feeling of accumulation. I really wanted the moments to add up because they do add up. I wanted to come up with a strategy that would allow these moments to accumulate in the reader's body in a way that they do accumulate in the body.

I don't think people want to look at problems. They want a continuous narrative, an optimistic narrative. A narrative that says there's a present and a future - and what was in the past no longer exists.

The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.