It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier.

I vividly remember the summer of 1964 with its voter registration drives, boiling racial tensions, and the erupting awareness of the cruelty of racism. I was never the same after that summer.

My mother's life was way too heavy for me.

A lot of time you write out of some unconscious place. I try to trust what is coming and where it wants to take me.

It shocks me how I wish for...what is lost and cannot come back.

You've got to figure out which end of the needle you're gon' be, the one that's fastened to the thread or the end that pierces the cloth.