I feel I am a child that's lost its mother. I feel like a calf whose mother has gone off to slaughter.

I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that's fine. But even if you don't quote-unquote make it, you're fine, if you've given it your whole heart and soul. You're totally in sync with your purpose and with the universe. And that's fine.

When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

It matters to me that I feel loved by the universe - and I do.