Sometimes there are good reasons to be literal

Elsie glared at him. "Do you always have to be so literal?"

Homer gave her question some though, then said, "Maybe it's a coal mining thing. If you don't look at the roof literally, it might fall literally on top of your head."

Homer Hickam, Carrying Albert Home (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), p. 309

Facing racism can be scary for whites

These are very scary times for a lot of people who are just now realizing that America is not, and has never been, the melting-pot utopia that their parents and teachers told them it was. These are very scary times for those who are just now realizing how justifiably hurt, angry, and terrified so many people of color have been all along. These are very stressful times for people of color who have been fighting and yelling and trying to protect themselves from a world that doesn't care, to suddenly be asked by those who've ignored them for so long, "What has been happening your entire life? Can you educate me?" Now that we're all int he room, how do we start this discussion?

Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Want to Talk About Race (Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 2019) (orig. pub. 2018), p. 5

What's the best place to write?

Whether you work in an airy studio, a stone tower, a bathroom, or even a bed, there is no "right" place for writing. The best place to write is anywhere you do.

Helen Sword, Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2017), p. 38