“It’s despicable of an author to kill his main personage solely for stirring imagination of indifferent or mean minds.”
“Literary style is like crystal-ware: the cleaner the wineglass, the brighter the brilliance. As a reader, I agree with those who believe that a colour of the dress, which a character has on, as well as any enumeration and description of dishes at dinner or in the kitchen should be mentioned only in case if all this has a strong consequent relation to the plot, but as an author, I can’t help mentioning all this, with no particular reason, just for love for my characters, desiring to give them something nice and pleasant. Melancholy grows a platinum rose. Affection grows a double rose.”
“As a writer, you must truly possess a love for words. Yes, that s right, I agreed. I ve noticed that some authors favor particular words, making frequent use of them. Do you have a favorite? I nodded assuredly and shared my answer. BECAUSE. My interviewer looked surprised, as though he d expected an impressive adjective or some rare verb. That s your favorite word? Why? I tried not to smirk. Because.”
“Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and allow them to feel just a small portion of the emotion I am desperately trying to preserve.”
“An author is like an incompetent bricklayer - doesn t use mortar and keeps rearranging the bricks until someone tells him to stop.”
“The first thing I ever learned in roller derby is to fall, and in the author world I believe that same rule applies.”
“Advice from a Romance Writer: Guys, make your woman feel pretty even on an off day. Trust me, good things will come of it.”
“I heart my job. I get to make things up for a living.”
“Most humans do not realize it consciously, but expressions and eyes say far more than words. Tears may produce little water, but they are a flood of expression.”
“Dad told me once that life is an accidental adventure, peppered with beautiful moments, but salted with stinging realities.”
“I knew the boys in my first novel, which I was writing at that time, weren t as raw as they could be, weren t *real.* I knew they were failing as characters because I wasn t pushing them to assume the reality that my real-life boys, Demond among them, experienced every day. I loved them too much: as an author, I was a benevolent God. I protected them from death, from drug addiction, from needlessly harsh sentences in jail for doing stupid, juvenile things like stealing four-wheel ATVs. All of the young Black men in my life, in my community, had been prey to these things in real life, and yet in the lives I imagined for them, I avoided the truth. I couldn t figure out how to love my characters less. How to look squarely at what was happening to the young Black people I knew in the South, and to write honestly about that. How to be an Old Testament God. To avoid all of this, I drank.”
“It s all a game of balance—but in the end, you ll always find time for something you re passionate about.”
“What a tiny world it would be without imagination.”