There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work.

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason.

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.

The child who is uprooted begins to recognize that what he builds within himself is what will endure, what will withstand shattering experiences.

He has, like me, a sense of smell. I let him inhale me, then I slip away.

I would like to have your sureness. I am waiting for love, the core of a woman's life." Don't wait for it," I said. "Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.

To write at the same temperature at which I live I should write nothing but poetry.