"I learned to trust my vision and advocate for it. I had experienced so much rejection that when I heard a “yes” I thought the process of “selling” my idea was over. In fact, that was the moment when I needed to be clearest about my intention"

"I hope to add my voice to the African authors before me, beside me, and behind me committed to creating balanced, engaging, informative, and authentic portraits of the continent. I don't want to romanticize Africa, but I do want people to be aware that there is more to the continent than corruption, political unrest, war, disease, poverty, genocide and the rest"

"I am motivated to write because it's important to me not to be defined by someone else. If we leave the Storytelling to other people we can't get too mad if they get it wrong. I also love writing--from the inspiration involved in coming up up with a concept to the discipline of the process to stringing the actual words together. I'm so thankful for the gift of words"

"I think writers have a responsibility to hold a mirror up to society. The beauty of writing is the reflection can, and should, come in various forms."

"I wanted to make the point that God works things for good--even when events in life seem random and ridiculous"

"I wanted to make the connection that just because a person is born outside the continent, he/she is not "other""

"I wanted to expose the superiority complex people in the West have concerning Africa."

"Don’t fall into the trap of feeling sorry for yourself because you haven’t yet got to the stage where you can [pursue your dream] full time"

"Look at a day job as a type of fellowship that pays you to research a certain sector or society"

"When citizens allow leaders to get away with providing sub-par infrastructure, or none at all, without demanding more for themselves and their children, nations remain stuck in a cycle of poverty and victimhood"

"Stories are inextricable from existence which means your story has incalculable value. It is needed by someone, somewhere, and if you keep at it, at some point you will connect with that someone"

"Keep going. If you keep writing, you’ll outpace the rejection. Storytelling is as old as humanity—every known civilization has told stories of life as they lived it, passed down legends of how we got here, and created fables or parables to illustrate morals or deliver lessons"

"During Black History Month, my father used to watch the nightly television footage of the Freedom buses burning, the dogs snarling and snapping, and say to me, "You can't force integration, boy. The people who want to integrate will integrate." I've never figured out to what extent, if at all, I agree or disagree with him, but it's an observation that's stayed with me. Made me realize that for many people integration is a finite concept. Here, in America, "integration" can be a cover-up. "I'm not racist. My prom date, second cousin, my president is black (or whatever)."

"Still, I don’t feel guilty. If I’m indeed moving backward and dragging all of [B]lack America down with me, I couldn’t care less."

"Problem is, they both disappeared from my life, first my dad, and then my hometown, and suddenly I had no idea who I was, and no clue how to become myself."

"But where my father saw an opportunity for information exchange, public advocacy, and communal counsel, Foy saw a midlife springboard to fame."

"We’ll hear argument first this morning in case 09-2606…in case 09-2606, Me v. the United States of America."

"Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it’s fear."

"You're supposed to wolf whistle! Like this…” Recklessly eyeballing her the whole way, he pursed his lips and let go a wolf whistle so lecherous and libidinous it curled both the white woman's pretty painted toes and the dainty red ribbon in her blond hair. Now it was her turn. And my father stood there, lustful and black, as she just as defiantly not only recklessly eyeballed him back but recklessly rubbed his dick through his pants"

"When we were younger, me, Marpessa, and the rest of the kids on the block would jet over to Hominy’s house after school, because what could be cooler than watching an hour of Little Rascals with a Little Rascal?"

"Massa…sometimes we just have to accept who we are and act accordingly. I’m a slave. That’s who I am. It’s the role I was born to play. A slave who just also happens to be an actor. But being black ain’t method acting.”"

"Genius is rare as turtle fangs, but talent is common enough."

"Illustrators are word people who happen to draw. We work with one foot in a book, the other stuck in a paint pot. Our shoes are a disgrace."

"The experienced illustrator subscribes to the principle of the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Should inspiration whisk down your chimney, be at your table. The first ten thousand drawings are the hardest. Put another way, you have ten thousand bad drawings within and should expel them as quickly as possible."

"Laughter shall drown the raucous shout; And, though these shelt’ring walls are thin, May they be strong to keep hate out And hold love in."

"It takes a heap o’ children to make a home that’s true, And home can be a palace grand, or just a plain, old shoe; But if it has a mother dear, and a good old dad or two, Why, that’s the sort of good old home for good old me and you."

"To reveal man in relation to the universe the poet must show himself not only concerned with the immensities but with the trivialities of daily life, with a sense of the past continually interrupting the present."

"All poetry is the reproduction of the tones of speech"

"The poet's dilemma..to create order in the midst of disorder"

"Louis Untermeyer was contributing poems which dealt with the realities of the class struggle, but which sounded a note of hope."

"I thought that the poets in the anthologies were the only real poets, that their being in the anthologies was proof of this, though some were classified as "great" and others as "minor." I owed much to those anthologies: Silver Pennies; the constant outflow of volumes edited by Louis Untermeyer; The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children; Palgrave's Golden Treasury; the Oxford Book of English Verse. But I had no idea that they reflected the taste of a particular time or of particular kinds of people."