“It's hard to describe one's own alchemy that makes one into a writer, ...” — Kevin Young Quote

“It's hard to describe one's own alchemy that makes one into a writer, but I definitely think American language is so interesting, and specifically Southern language and black Southern language; it's hard to separate Southern language from black language.”

“There is, of course, no larger mass hysteria in American history than the epidemic of racism.”

“I think music is poetry in the sense that I think the condition of poetry I'm going for has some qualities of music that it aspires to.”

“I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subverted or used to disguise the author's intent. My own way of doing this is to attempt a sort of whimsical alchemy, whereby seemingly incompatible genres are brought into unlikely partnerships.”

“I took a course on 'Magic, Alchemy, and Astrology' at Mount Holyoke, and it was a whole new awakening for me, a way of thinking about the world primarily in terms of concepts and words rather than mathematical formulas.”