Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different..." from Two or Three Things i Know For Sure

What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.

I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way. Do not buy into their system of censorship, imagining that if you drop this character or hide that emotion, you can slide through their blockades. Do not eat your heart out in the hope of pleasing them.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

I claimed myself and remade my life.

And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained. And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry.