Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.

Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.

I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way.

If I could have found what I needed at thirteen, I would not have lost so much of my life chasing vindication or death. Give some child, some thirteen-year old, the hope of the remade life. Tell the truth. Write the story that you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you there is magic in it.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces you to confront your responsibility as narrator, whereas any of the social sciences make you at look the interaction between the storyteller and story.

Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.