I don't require myself or anyone to go beyond what they feel they can do. I just do suggest - for their own eventual happiness - that they go as far as they can. They can usually go much further than they think.

Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself.

I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

Anything we love can be saved.

What a burden to think one is conceived in sin rather than in pleasure; that one is born into evil rather than into joy.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.