Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

You are your best thing

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away

I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.