What you say is what matters.

To watch your home change in front of you is surprising. But at the same time, going someplace like Mississippi, makes me appreciate even this.

People are going to judge you all the time no matter what you do...Don't worry about other people. Worry about you.

I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.

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.

Maybe this was our last summer as best friends. I feel like something's going to change now and I'm not going to be able to change it back. —Margaret

Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.