Our lives preserved. How it was; and how it be. Passing it along in the relay. That is what I work to do: to produce stories that save our lives.
The story is a piece of work. The novel is a way of life.
The dream is real, my friends. The failure to make it work is the unreality.
Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn’t keep up with what’s out there ain’t gonna be out there.
Not all speed is movement.
We have not been scuffling in this waste-howling wildness for the right to be stupid.
An artist represents an oppressed people and makes revolution irresistible.
People have to be given permission to write, and they have to be given space to breathe and stumble. They have to be given time to develop and to reveal what they can do.
And what is religion, you might ask. It’s a technology of living.
What is happening to the daughters of the yam? Seem like they just don’t know how to draw up the powers from the deep like before. Not full sunned and sweet anymore.
It’s a dismally lonely business, writing.
Medication without explanation is obscene.
The only proper mask to wear in life is your own damn face.
One monkey don’t stop no show. Not one, not six. The struggle continues.
Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.
Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion.
If your house ain’t in order, you ain’t in order. It is so much easier to be out there than in here.
Keep the focus on the action not the institution; don’t confuse the vehicle with the objective; all cocoons are temporary and disappear.
Cause love won’t let you let’m go.” “But they want to go, that’s the hurting part.” “Like you tole the lap sitter this morning, Min, when you hurt, hurt. But when you see the chirren calling down thunder and going up in flames, Min. Why then you snatch you a blanket.
So I deal in straight-up fiction myself, cause I value my family and friends, and mostly cause I lie a lot anyway.
Two hundred pounds of grief and heft if she was one-fifty. Bless her heart, just a babe of the times. Wants to be smiling and feeling good all the time. Smooth sailing as they lower the mama into the ground. Then there’s you. What’s your story?