In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?

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

In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace--and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

We can speculate. Last time I checked, the future doesn't take my advice.

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

I think men spend so much time passing for being men. There's a sense among many writers of color that the most invisible figure that was sitting between all of us was the nerd. But it was the thing we weren't saying, that people were afraid to say, like, "Yo, what we do is nerdy by definition."