The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance.

I think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.

Write what haunts you. What keeps you up at night. What you are unable to get out of your mind. Sometimes they are the hardest things to write, but those are often the things that are worth investigating by you specifically. . .

All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.

It's not a matter of whether the reviews of your books are good or bad, it's about being taken seriously, both as a woman writer and as a writer of color. Also, it worries me when people point to a couple of women writers or writers of color who get some attention - and I am sometimes pulled into that category - to prove that others are getting a fair shot. It's like those people who keep saying that racism no longer exists in this country because Barack Obama was a President of the United States.

More and more people are able to access information - thank goodness we have the Internet and if you are interested you can find things. Which is different than even 20 years ago.