The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.

I think what happened to me was that I was always being taught to look, but one day I started to see. And it was because a lot of women in my life were refusing just to be looked at, to be this passive figure.

...and when he thought about the way she laughed, as though she owned the air around her, his heart thundered inside his chest, a lonely rada.

I was surrounded by a lot of male writers of color who have this incredibly bizarre relationship to masculinity. It's like we were all mega-nerds but you would never know that if you listened to the way they talk about themselves.

Books are wonderful, but they aren't that powerful.

Anger has a way of returning.

The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.