Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.

I type in one place, but I write all over the house.

They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.

Let your face speak what's in your heart. When my kids walk in the room my face says I'm glad to see them.