I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.

The seeds of destruction lie in the definition of "chosen-ness" and can easily blossom into bigotry. It's not inevitable but it needs constant care to avoid.

I know it's trash: just another story made up to scare wicked females and correct unruly children. But it's all I have. I know I need something else. Something better. Like a story that shows how brazen women can take a good man down. I can hum to that.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

One of the monstrous things that slavery in this country caused was the breakup of families. I mean, physical labor, horrible; beatings, horrible; lynching death, all of that, horrible. But the living life of a parent who, A, has no control over what happens to your children, none. They don't belong to you. You may not even nurse them. They may be shipped off somewhere, as in "Beloved" the mother was, to be nursed by somebody who was not able to work in the fields and was a wet nurse.

The children - I call them children when they're under 18 - are hungry for that love. The drugs are just a sleep that you can't even wake up from, because you might remember what you did when you were there. There's no place for them - there should be a rehabilitation center on every corner, along with McDonald's and the banks. This is serious business. The waiting lists are incredible. I mean, it's terrible. It's really terrible.

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative - no author does, I can tell you - you could nevertheless create it.