But I'm more scared of not writing.

the world I create in writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.

Write in the kitchen, lock yourself up in the bathroom. Write on the bus or the welfare line, on the job or during meals.

These my two hands / quick to slap my face / before others could slap it.

Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don't let the pen banish you from yourself.

Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an "alien" element.

Books saved my sanity, knowledge opened the locked places in me and taught me first how to survive and then how to soar.