I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Wherever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared.

If a person is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.

I'm not being disrespectful of the medium; it's just not as important as the work that I actually do [books].

I'm the kind of woman that likes to enjoy herselves in peace.

As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.

To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before.