You meditate and then you can put on your pajamas, or you can imagine you're wearing your pajamas, and you talk about your piece of writing in the language you would use if you were wearing your pajamas and you were seated at a table with your very good friend. And you wouldn't have to get all dressed up or clean up the table.

When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.

When you become a driver, they don't tell you that you have to switch languages. The drivers have their own language and they don't tell you that as girls. How am I supposed to know that blinking light means something? There are all these little languages that you have to know, but you don't know.

Why don't we have people like Thich Nhat Hanh or Marshall Rosenberg and Nelson Mandela solving violent situations in a peaceful way?

All of my works are performance pieces, as is true for many writers of color, writers who have indigenous roots - because our basis is spoken word.

I know there are a lot of women who are afraid of driving on highways.

Think about the books that you were reading at a certain crisis in your life, what you were reading, and that's because you needed them to nourish your alma.