Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.

Anything I have ever learned of any consequence, I have learned from Black people. I have never been bored by any Black person, ever.

I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.