All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

When I was young, I was older than I am today.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.