"What I can say for myself is that I have never taken anything for granted. The privilege of working [and] of doing this work in particular [is] the joy of the exchange that happens between the members of the whole company if you’re open to it [and] my responsibility as a member of a creative team [and] my responsibility to the audience."

"Doing too much is one of my great failures – one with which I always wrestle."

"I have always measured my success in terms of how far I fell short of or accomplished what I imagined the character to be. This has been and is a constant."

"I have been immensely privileged to have the opportunity to creatively stand in another human’s psyche. It’s wonderful to commit to the journey of an actor, to live inside someone else’s head and heart space, to get as close as you can to how they are physically operating in this world. I have an extraordinary level of gratitude, to have been fortunate enough to have had an astonishing range of work, especially since I’m not one of those actors who can necessarily choose what role to play."

"I personally suffer if I spend too long in the city because I live remotely."

"Lauren Benton has done more than any other scholar in recent generations to reintegrate global history with legal history. With archival tenacity and broad conceptual sweep, she has used fine-grained microhistory in the service of world-spanning arguments about the tentative distribution of imperial power, the informal elaboration of international law, and the paradoxes of sovereignty in a world unevenly colonized and incompletely decolonized."

"Historical actors on all sides were engaging in what I call “legal politics”—that is, they were using and citing law strategically while enmeshed in multi-sided conflicts and relationships. In the process, they were creating and reinforcing regimes of limited violence with very specific openings to extreme violence."

"We should heap skepticism on any group launching a small war or brief attack claiming that they possess workable mechanisms for keeping small wars small."

"She has made a uniquely powerful case that the history of international law must take into account not simply the arguments of prominent legal theorists but also the actions and arguments of a host of actors from all over the world, what she has called "vernacular forms of political theory.""

"After “Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes” I was nominated for two collections that I wrote alone and won for both: “Being989336 Full of Light, Insubstantial”, which was 100 poems (Space & Time, 2007) & “How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend” a collection of short stories and poetry (Necon E-Books, 2011)."

"A collaborative collection, “Dark Duet” of music inspired poetry written with Stephen M. Wilson, published by Necon E-Books 2012, was on the final ballot. This was a very special collection for me. Stephen approached me with the project and I was excited to work with him because he did poetry that made shapes on the page and I wanted to try something different. We worked seamlessly together and I’m extremely proud of this book. Unfortunately, Stephen died from cancer in 2013."

"Tears started streaming down my face because the power of forgiveness is something great. If my dad could forgive George Wallace, who am I to say that I can’t forgive."

"It was tremendous. It was huge. It’s Mississippi, and so much happened in Mississippi, so I thought it was more important than ever. I had a come-to-Jesus moment within my soul. I mean, I’m honored."

"My fourth HWA Bram Stoker award® was received in 2014 for “Four Elements” with Charlee Jacob, Marge Simon & Rain Graves, published by Bad Moon Book. The book has four sections for the four elements, Earth, Fire, Water and Air. Each of us picked an element, mine was Air which I wrote as a person who travels through time and space. I’ve known the other authors for years and it was a great honor working with them to create this collection."

"I didn’t know him any other way,And, if I called him something else, he would say that I was rude and disrespectful and wouldn’t listen to me."

"They should learn how to do it nonviolently, but that’s it. I think the future looks bright."

"It doesn’t matter if you have to stand in lines for five or six hours to vote. Stand there.”"

"What can you do? What are you going to do? We need a healing in America right now. We need a healing going on in the Heartland. We need a healing going on in Mississippi"

"It’s a long road that we’ve gone down, but it’s not over. There’s a division in America today, and it’s time for a reconciliation."

"It was mind-blowing experience (to quote a cliche). I literally was so excited to be on the final ballot with people who were my heroes that it didn’t occur to me that I would actually win. The awards were in New York City so my mother came up from Philly for the awards banquet. It was amazing to receive it and have my mother there (she passed in 2009). She was my biggest supporter and it meant everything to me for her to see this great honoring. I could barely speak. I did get it together enough to make my mother stand up and wave to everyone. It’s one of my happiest memories."

"Read (all kinds of writing, even the kind you don’t do), listen to music, go to art shows. There is such energy from creating and it’s important to feed all the senses."

"Don’t edit while writing first draft, just get it out. This is a rule I often struggle with because I know the quality I want, but I also know it’s important to write it from beginning to end and the editor mind doesn’t help that for me."

"Once your work is as good as you can make it Send It Out! Don’t spend time wondering if it will be accepted or not, just get it out the house and start something new. If it comes back and you can make it better, do it. If you can’t make it better, Send It Out anyway. We writers are not the best judge of our work. For sure, your writing will get better the more you write, not necessarily rewriting the same piece."

"When it came out I had the first book signing set for Sept 11, 2001 in Rockefeller Center in NYC. Yes, that day! I had the book propped up on my desk at my day job as a software developer. When that day came to an end I couldn’t even look at the cover. The first poem is called ‘Fire/Fight’, which I write years before 9/11 but suddenly was too relevant."

"As NYC and I tried to find a new normal after the Towers were destroyed I slowly returned to my book. I was interviewed a couple of times about the book title and opening poem."

"It’s a poetry collection I put together around the concept of transformation after destruction. There are three sections titled: Things Gone Bad, In Between, Transformation. The poems cover many kinds of loss and transformation, for example: a mother mourning a lost child, a lover loss of self, a revengeful lover, even a human losing their soul to a Voodoo Goddess."

"All of the books I mentioned above are available as print and/or eBooks. The links are on my website"

"I didn’t realize then that I was the first Black award winner until someone bought it up and I looked back at the history of HWA Bram Stoker winners. One awesome thing that came out of winning was that my high school, Germantown HS, in Philadelphia asked me to speak at a graduation."

"I would say I’ve spent my whole life making up fairy tales, poetry, etc. I started writing to see myself in print when I was in high school. I had a couple of poems published in my high school magazine. Once I got out of college I started seriously submitting work (and collecting a good number of rejections), eventually the rejections became acceptances around 1994."

"I received the HWA Bram Stoker award® for “Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes”, a poetry collection published by Space & Time, with an introduction by one of my favorite authors, Charlee Jacob and cover by Colleen Crary, interior illustrations by Marge Simon."

"Everything around me, the news, my past, my hopes for the future, all the positive and negative things that humans do to each other and the planet. I moved from NYC in 2014 to Arizona and went from a city kid to being surrounded by mountains and nature. The mountains and desert have an overall settling effect on me which help me focus."

"Write, write, write. Write every day, even if only for a few minutes. I believe most writing happens in our subconscious so if we sit down each day the subconscious gets to know, ‘ah so I can show up now’ and it will pour out what it’s been mulling over."

"Know that even when you’re not putting words on paper/computer you’re writing. Living is writing. Everything we do feeds creativity, even in the most un-obvious ways."

"But while we are in this body, let’s be healthy, and contribute in whatever way we can to a world that runs on love. I have no doubt that that’s the way."

"It gave me an exposure and appreciation of how poor people live and survive,"

"You cannot love God without loving the environment. God is everywhere. You can see his hand in everything. From the plants to the stars,"

"As some of you may know, I am having health challenges which I have found a blessing. So yesterday morning, I was was blessed to have a visit from Gary, his wife Angeli, and the sister of Maricel who is also a very beautiful person."

"She talks of how she felt when she left her body. Heaven is so nice. She didn’t want to come back. So, there is life after ‘death."

"𝙄 𝙙𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙠 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙙 𝙞𝙛 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙠 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚."

"I don't like suffering and I don't like injustice."

"We’re not small! We should believe we can fly."

"One of the biggest mistakes of humanity is to foolishly think we are these physical bodies and life ends when this physical body deteriorates."

"Life is what you make of it. The experience of life is how you see it."

"I believe that through care of the environment and good marketing, communities can get out of poverty very quickly."

"It’s an awakening of the people."

"If you killed the Environment, you kill everything."

"And whose duty is it to protect our people? It's the government. And when you make decisions based on business interests, you have shirked your responsibility. You have lost the moral ascendancy to rule the government because to you, business and money is more important than the welfare of our people."

"I’m going to do the right thing and let the dice fall where it may."