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.

You must learn her. You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. And, this is how you keep her.

If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.

What else she doesn't know: that the man next to her would end up being her husband and the father of her two children, that after two years together he would leave her, her third and final heartbreak, and she would never love again.

Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over.

My art feels like it's real disobedient. I can fill notebooks with observations and maybe they find their way into the work unconsciously, which is great. I've never been able to directly plug, like to take a little snip that I've picked up on the street and transfer it into a story. I don't know what's wrong, but it never works that way.

I prefer the 1950s where people were like, "I'm a white supremacist, and that's who I am." Now people want to burn a cross on your lawn and call themselves not racists.