My grandmother was married for fifty-two years, until my grandfather died. She used to say that a bad marriage was one that hadn't had enough time to… - Gabrielle Zevin

The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures.

Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —

It's when you don't need something that you tend to lose it.