A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave the writer's hands and head to a publisher, it needs about five more revisions. Some people don't want to do that.

I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.

Where I grew up, it was all people who were black and Latino, people who look like me. Now I live in a neighborhood where very, very few people look like me.

I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, "How could that possibly be?"

My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.

No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.