The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.

Maybe happiness is like a virus. Maybe it's one of those bugs that sits for a long time, so we don't even know that we are infected.

Only keep still, wait, and hear, and the world will open.

Until I was 42, I could fit everything that I owned into two suitcases.

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.

Out of grad school, I worked as a tech writer for a while before going into computer coding for a living.

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.