Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The hardest part is telling one's story. Once the story is on the page, the rest will come.
My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.
I feel like, as a person of color, I've always been kind of doing the work against the tide.
Seems like every time life starts straightening itself out, something's gotta go and happen.
The civil rights movement was about access to public space. We had to fight for public space.
I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.
Everything I write, I read aloud. It has to sound a certain way and look a certain way on page.
I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.
Memory doesn't come as a straight narrative. It comes in small moments with all this white space.
To be poet laureate is to try to spread the love and the accessibility of poetry to young people.
What I write comes from a place of deep love, and a deep understanding of all kinds of otherness.
Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.
My kids speak of both subtle slights and blatant racism. It's a narrative I never imagined for them.
Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.
The idea of feeling isolated is scary to me - to walk through the world alone would be heartbreaking.
No matter how big you get, it's still okay to cry because everybody's got a right to their own tears.
People want to know and understand each other across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability.
I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.
When I was a child, we never began a meal without prayer. We thanked God for the food, for each other.
Being a Witness was too closed an experience. That's what I walked away from, not the things I believe.
Mama says it's okay to be on the quiet side—if quiet means you're listening, watching, taking it all in.
Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.
Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.
I didn't know how many independent bookstores had amazing wine lists until I toured with 'Another Brooklyn.'
A 10-year-old knows a lot. If you think she or he isn't noticing the world around them, you're missing a lot.
Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page.
I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, "How could that possibly be?"
My mother was a single mom whose days were spent as a customer service rep at Con Edison in downtown Brooklyn.
I love slow readers. And readers who think about what I've written, think about how it's written - and copy me!
I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise.
I think boys don't always like to read books with female protagonist - I don't even know what to say about this.
My mom was a big fan of Al Green... James Brown we weren't allowed to listen to, so of course I knew James Brown.
I think, even though homophobia still exists, there is much more of a dialogue and a taboo around being homophobic.
People are going to judge you all the time no matter what you do...Don't worry about other people. Worry about you.
I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.
One place exists as their interpretation of it. For the people living and thriving inside of it, it's another place.
I've wanted to be a writer since I was seven, but I didn't grow up in family where people aspired to live as writers.
I love playing with form. I love playing with sounds... I love music, and I love writing that has a musicality to it.
There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.
Young people are often ignored and disregarded, but they are acute observers and learners of everything we say and do.
People who are living in economic struggle are more than their circumstances. They're majestic and creative and beautiful.
I'm usually working on several things at once. If I get bored with one, I can go on to another. That way, I never get stuck.
The empty swing set reminds us of this-- that bad won't be bad forever, and what is good can sometimes last a long, long time.
I don't want my kids to have to walk through a world where they have to constantly explain who they are and who their family is.
I can't write about nice, easy topics because that won't change the world. And I do want to change the world - one reader at a time.
Told a lot of stories as a child. Not 'Once upon a time' stories but, basically, outright lies. I loved lying and getting away with it!
Sometimes, I don't know that words for things, how to write down the feeling of knowing that every dying person leaves something behind.
In the family, writing wasn't anything anyone understood - being a writer in the real world? How could it be? We didn't have those mirrors.