Animals were not made for us, or our use. They have their own use, which is just being who they are.

I come from somewhere and from specific black people in the South, including my parents, who built our first school, and rebuilt it after it was burned to the ground. And they used to bake pies and cakes to raise money to keep it going. So, I learned to struggle from a very early way in a way that was truly indigenous to the South.

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

America is not nearly done. We're only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows... what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants - if they survive that long - will see.

My writing is very organic. It's what I am. My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. So I think of it as something that's very essential to my being.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

Curiosity is my natural state and has led me headlong into every worthwhile experience (never mind the others) I have ever had.