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

To produce that identity among young people required guinea pigs.

I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'

You can't find intimacy - you can't find home - when you're always hiding behind masks. Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You running the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood.

If you really want a prize, or if you really want applause, you should try to write as many books as humanly possible.

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

A first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men. And out of this disillusionment and turmoil sprang Beli's first adult oath, one that would follow her into adulthood, to the States and beyond. I will not serve.