“All of us, writers and non-writers alike, have incredible well-springs of personal experience and history. And we also have imagination - which I think is a kind of human miracle.” ThinkingHumansWellsKindImaginationSpringMiracleIncrediblesPersonal Experiences Author:Ayana Mathis
“Racial terrorism affects the lives of white people and black people and everyone, everything. Racism is contaminating. It can affect the dogs in the street. So the process of beginning to rid the country of prejudice was in itself a kind of nation-building.” PeopleKindCountryBlackDogRacismPrejudiceTerrorismBlack People Author:Ayana Mathis
“At some point I just acknowledged, at least to myself, that I had a great deal of respect for people of faith. Faith is a strange and wonderful thing. You come up to a kind of wall of unknowing and instead of turning back in despair you leap over it into something else. The Church isn't why I'm a writer, but it's probably a part of it.” PeopleKindChurchWonderfulStrangeWallDespairOver ItLeapUnknowing Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think of my success as a kind of fluke. How else could I possibly think of it? And although it's a banal thing to say, I wrote my book because I was writing my book. At first I didn't know I was writing it, and one of the amazing things that happened as I was putting sentences down on paper is that some of the things that are most sacred and important to me rose to the surface of the prose.” ThinkingWritingKindImportantBookRoseProse Author:Ayana Mathis
“You have to find a way of shutting the future out and focusing on the writing. One of the problems I'll have with writing my second book is getting back into a situation where I think about the words on the page rather than the publishing industry, or success, or any kind of readership I may now have. I'll have to do what writers do, which is focus on the story and nothing else.” ThinkingWritingKindBookProblemSituationFocusPublishing Author:Ayana Mathis