I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.

For some people, it's very easy to be spontaneous and they can pour out the most wonderful stuff. But it's really hard to exert control over it, to think, 'Well, this could be different. This could go in the opposite order, there could be more here and less there.' For other people, it's much easier to have rules and a methodology, but much harder to let loose and allow their feelings to come pouring out on the page. They're more shy or they're just more distant from their emotions. I think everybody starts with one or the other.

Inevitably we start by thinking that if our work is any good, we'll get money. It's as we would if you started up a business or if you work in another profession.

We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in a story.

Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.