The most empowering thing you can do though is to create innovative ways to bring in livable wages. That begins with a debt free lifestyle.

— Brandi L. Bates

THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A laps Pauli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape. When Ivy was a child, and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man. She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street. For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel’s apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit. She couldn’t get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that ascribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post-traumatic stress syndrome was made of.

— Brandi L. Bates

The reason why many people remain on the bottom is because they play to 'not lose', as opposed to playing to win at all costs.

— Brandi L. Bates

Thighs made of hymns, I read 'em like I'm reading runes. Now tell me where my future lies...your neck, can I Savion on it?

— Brandi L. Bates

Unapologetically smitten with thunderstorms...the thought of rough sex beneath an acid washed moon and hydrated stars...

— Brandi L. Bates

Understand: I don't ever want to be equal to any other being. I always want to be greater...in all things, in all circumstances.

— Brandi L. Bates

Whatever it is you want in this life, be it material things, a place you want to be, or an experience you want to have, you must first make it real in the realm of your consciousness.

— Brandi L. Bates

When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.

— Brandi L. Bates

When the door to my writing chamber gasps shut and the almost imperceptible sigh of a rose petal falls on my desk, I know that my muse is present.

— Brandi L. Bates

Wrote my way out of the hood...thought my way out of poverty! Don't tell me that knowledge isn't power. Education changes everything.

— Brandi L. Bates