Angie Dickerson

“I go stand far outside, separating my darker-than-white but lighter-than-Black skin from the inside place, to separate the violence of this skin into a thing I can hold and be responsible for alone.”
― Christina Olivares, No Map of the Earth Includes Stars

“I imagine the dead are exhausted by our refusal to live, to say the story straight, as they push eons of unspoken against our recalcitrant mouths. For us to do the small courtesy of naming, therefore seeing. But what is there left to be afraid of? Everything's happened to us already. What happens again is only an echo.”
― Christina Olivares, No Map of the Earth Includes Stars

“You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in … Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“We are an unchecked species; we destroy / The planet with maps.”
― Christina Olivares, No Map of the Earth Includes Stars