277 Quotes by Jesmyn Ward

I love my community. I love always being able to come back and have a home.

There was nothing postracial about my experience, and there still isn't.

When I was writing my first novel, 'Where the Line Bleeds,' which had young black men as its main characters, I was very invested in telling the story and also very worried about the effects the story would have.

I've been in so many writing workshops where someone hands in a story, and when the other writers in the workshop are giving feedback, they say, 'This is unbelievable.' And the writer says, 'Well, actually, the events are based in real life. This actually happened.'

A lot of times, real life is more surreal than writing.

By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events in the book were happening, I knew I'd probably write about them one day. I didn't want to. I'd studied fiction, and I was committed to establishing myself as a fiction writer first.

I knew it would be painful to write a memoir.

We salvage the bones of our lives every day, through small tragedies and big tragedies.

Biblical myth is as integral to the spirit of the South as the heat and humidity.