I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book's binder.

There was something about telling the lie-story and seeing your friends' eyes grow wide with wonder. Of course I got in trouble for lying, but I didn't stop until fifth grade.

Told a lot of stories as a child. Not 'Once upon a time' stories but, basically, outright lies. I loved lying and getting away with it!

Hope is universal.

I write for whoever needs to read it.

A 10-year-old knows a lot. If you think she or he isn't noticing the world around them, you're missing a lot.

Who are you without your girls? I truly believe that. Who are you without the people who help you make sense of the misogyny, the racism, the economic struggle, all of it? You need those people saying you're a good mom, a great writer. You're a great dresser. You cook well. Whatever the beauty is that you need to hear.

My kids speak of both subtle slights and blatant racism. It's a narrative I never imagined for them.

When I was a child, we never began a meal without prayer. We thanked God for the food, for each other.

In all my childhood, I never heard my grandparents say that anything shocked or surprised them. They knew what their country was capable of.

I would have written 'Brown Girl Dreaming' if no one had ever wanted to buy it, if it went nowhere but inside a desk drawer that my own children pulled out one day to find a tool for survival, a symbol of how strong we are and how much we've come through.

By the time I was in fifth grade, I was dreaming of the Pulitzer Prize.

For my family, 'black-ish' is the reward on a Thursday evening - a day after the show officially airs, when it's finally available to be streamed.

My mother was a single mom whose days were spent as a customer service rep at Con Edison in downtown Brooklyn.

Until I was about 13, Manhattan had been a world seen from its edges.

You can't have too many books featuring people of color, just like you can't have too many books featuring white people.

I'm usually working either on a picture book and a young adult book, or a middle grade book and a young adult book. When I get bored with one, I move to the other, and then I go back.

I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.

To me, elegy suggests that there is hope, and in some respects you've moved past the loss and are able to deal with it and to write about it.

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.

I'm usually working on several things at once. If I get bored with one, I can go on to another. That way, I never get stuck.

The South was very segregated. I mean, all through my childhood, long after Jim Crow was supposed to not be in existence, it was still a very segregated South.

Greenville, S.C., in the 1970s is a rolling green dream in my memory now.

I love how much love there is in the world of young adult and children's literature.