I don't have the courage not to write all the time.

Little children are all writers.

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

Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.

It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.

When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.

I remember I had had one woman who had three or four kids, and some of them were having problems. I said, 'Maybe you could go write somewhere else, away from your house.' And sure enough, all kinds of wonderful stuff emerged. She was keeping too much charge of herself because she couldn't stop being a mother when she was in the house. You have to find your own way of letting loose, if you're one of those people.