Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. They have stopped seeing each other. It is not easy to see another person.

There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.

Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down.

She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name.

Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.