I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way.

The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.

Behind the story I tell is the one I don't...Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different...I claimed myself and remade my life. Only when I knew I belonged to myself completely did I become capable of giving myself to another, of finding joy in desire, pleasure in our love, power in this body no one else owns.

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.