The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.

My life is not packaged, Not tidy. There are leftover strands and jagged Edges that cut even my friends.

Think about all the tomorrows of your life.

Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

Each of us is born with a history already in place

The idea of voluntary segregation went against every value I had been taught. What did being born black have to do with excellence?