Jess Row

My greatest fear about a world in which racial reassignment surgery becomes common is that it then becomes an expression of all kinds of class privilege. You have a truly dystopian society divided between the people who can afford to be racially altered and perfected and the ones who can't.

Writers of color are given certain messages - explicit or implicit - about what they're allowed to write about or what will be successful if they write about it. And white writers are given another set of implicit and, sometimes, explicit messages.

Embrace yourself and do what you can to look and feel your best. Don't put on so many fashion trends that create a ridiculous style statement. Pick and choose what feels good, and flatters your own body.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.

What happens when we're willing to feel bad is that, sure enough, we often feel bad - but without the stress of futile avoidance. Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests, and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes parts of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined.