One place exists as their interpretation of it. For the people living and thriving inside of it, it's another place.

I think I had gotten messages really young that poetry wasn't for me, that it was for, basically, some dead white men. My experience and my intellect was on the outside of understanding that. I think that's what's so destructive.

When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.

That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.

Sometimes...you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.

I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise.

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