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Even Toni Morrison claiming Bill Clinton as 'black' could not prepare us for the election of America's first undeniably black president, Barack Obama.
Kevin Young -
When I'm in full-on writing mode and have the day, I try to get in my office around 10 A.M. and stop once 'Judge Judy' comes on at 4, when I quit and come down. Sometimes, I leave her on while I edit - if she can make the tough calls, then so can I.
Kevin Young
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Rereading 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was struck by what I had forgotten of the book: in a manner of pages, we encounter shame, history, ruin, conflicting stories, and wounds badly healed; in short, the South.
Kevin Young -
Here are the facts: my folks grew up so poor that, in the words of Redd Foxx, there were twenty o's between the p and r.
Kevin Young -
There's something about the kind of time travel that a poem can provide. It can take you to somewhere else - a culture far from you, a language far from you, but suddenly you're there. You're that person, seeing with that person's eyes. I think that's really tremendous. Even things like cinema or more traditional history can't quite do that.
Kevin Young -
There is, of course, no larger mass hysteria in American history than the epidemic of racism.
Kevin Young -
One of the most troubling things about the term 'fake news' is that it has become a force field against accusations you don't like.
Kevin Young -
I write about what hoaxers do, but I also want us to think about what believers do. Why do we want to believe a story like James Frey's 'A Million Little Pieces?' Why did we want to believe that Lance Armstrong really did all these things that, looking back, seemed impossible?
Kevin Young
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Music and the blues, they have taught me a lot. I think in this book, 'Book Of Hours,' there is this blues sensibility. There are moments of humor even in the sorrow, and I'm really interested in the way that the blues have that tragic-comic view of life - what Langston Hughes called 'laughing to keep from crying.'
Kevin Young -
I feel music is another kind of literature.
Kevin Young -
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.
Kevin Young -
Poets often are dealing with history and are thinking about the way history moves across us, and we move in it.
Kevin Young -
I rather think that archives exist to keep things safe - but not secret.
Kevin Young -
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.
Kevin Young
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We've learned quickly that the Web is far more pseudonymous than anonymous: online, our names have simply been changed to a number, an I.P. address, protocol, and code.
Kevin Young -
Forget reparations - we need to rescue aspects of black culture abandoned even by black folks, whether it is the blues or home cookin' or broader forms of not just survival but triumph.
Kevin Young -
A DJ draws a connection between two seemingly disparate things and says, 'Look, they are alike. You can dance to them.'
Kevin Young -
There's always been really interesting, diverse black voices talking and arguing and counterpointing.
Kevin Young -
Not many poets have editors.
Kevin Young -
I remember in the '80s, people would literally have arguments over the best guitarist.
Kevin Young
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We had moved cross-country from upstate New York to Kansas in the heat wave of 1980, with two cars, no air-conditioning, and a black dog. I can still see the infernal temperature of a hundred and nineteen degrees on a bank sign somewhere near Ohio.
Kevin Young -
It's a black Southern belief that blue glass keeps out bad spirits.
Kevin Young -
I think I go with the Duke Ellington view on music. He said, 'There's two kinds of music - there's good music, and then there's the other kind.'
Kevin Young -
The first rule of influence is that there isn't any. The second rule of influence is that it is everywhere.
Kevin Young