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

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

Writers sometimes are paid a great deal of money, but much more frequently they're not paid or are paid only a little bit.

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.

Even murderers, I suppose, experience the loss of car keys the way the rest of us do. I mean, how can they not? Once you make this person scramble around the house looking for her car keys and finally find them, get in the car, and run into traffic, we can identify with her enough that when she stops the car and pulls the gun out of her purse and heads in to kill somebody, we'll be with her as much as is possible.

Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.