I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

Brown people wouldn't speak to someone who was black.

I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.

Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between being a writer and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. You've got to want to write, I say to them, not want to be a writer. The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.

I think most people when you say slavery tend to see a group of anonymous people pulling cotton sacks in great plantation fields, and that is largely true.