My father owned pit bulls when I was young. He sometimes fought them. My brother and a lot of the men in my community owned pit bulls as well: sometimes they fought them for honor, never for money.

Grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief.

By the numbers, by all the official records, here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing.

I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.

While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.

I wanted to be my own heroine.

That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.

I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them.

I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African diaspora, people of this region, and throughout the south.

There is laughter, shrill calls. Everyone is flirting, saying in nudges and jokes and blushing what they would do in private

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.

The true adventurer sees his glass as half full even when there are things swimming in it.

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.

I was just confident my work was good.

You got to be smart you got to be clever and not get hit and when your able to do this your a fighter

Just putting my uniform on keeps me going. Being able to get out there keeps me going. That's the best therapy.

As a result of the cold, the machine-guns were no longer able to fire...the result of all this was a panic...The battle worthiness of our infantry is at an end

I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I just always knew that my career would be playing music.

I do my best; I put out things I believe in and if you don't like it then pass on to something else.

Every day can't be the best day Do what you can right now, don't hesitate That's why we try to make love and get paid Take the bad with the good, now let's play