For years I felt that I wasn't ready to take on slavery. It's a huge topic, and I didn't want to mess it up.

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.

The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone.

The fallout from slavery is ongoing. I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

I write books and either people read them or they don't read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn't change the difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas.

Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone. It meant knowing you are property that could be sold to the highest bidder, of value only to continue to support the plantation economy.

New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.