When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.

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

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

All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too.

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

It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.