If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.

There's a long-term tradition of white supremacy in this country. [Donald] Trump isn't something entirely new. But then there is the crisis for white supremacy in this country now where you have people of color standing up for themselves in ways that they've never stood up for themselves or at least standing up for themselves in a generational, novel way.

Anger has a way of returning.

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.

In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

It was like being at the bottom of an ocean, she said. There was no light and a whole ocean crushing down on you. But most people had gotten so used to it they thought it normal, they forgot even that there was a world above.

Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertibe knowledge that she will never forgive you.