One thing I'm always thinking about myself is what am I willing to make up? And the answer is not much.

I'm about going out in the world and noticing stuff, and going home and writing it down, and putting it next to other stuff I've noticed and seeing what happens.

Give me a labyrinth to walk and I can usually free my mind.

My parents were travelers. Every time my parents got ten dollars ahead they went somewhere. That's what they did. So I got the bug from them.

I've always traveled. I'm a professor in a limited way. I teach one class two quarters out of four, so I get traveling done.

I'm always out looking for weird, beautiful things.

Praise Roxane Gay for her big-hearted self-examining intelligence, for her inclusive and forgiving stance, for her courage and determination . . . for saying out loud the things we were thinking, for guiding us back to ourselves and returning to us what was ours all along.