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

For me as a writer, it was understanding that we're so far behind in our way of dealing with death. We put someone in the ground, we bury them or we burn them, and then we're supposed to just move on and kind of get over it.

I think writers are the history keepers, right? We're the ones who are bearing witness to what's going on in the world. And I feel like it's our job to put that down on paper, and put it out into the world, so that it can be remembered.

Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.

Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.

When you think of how a child experiences a series of events, it feels, for so long, like she's looking at everything from behind this glass and it's obscured.

I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.