I've never gotten used to winter and never will.

What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.

I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.

The shadow of my mother danced around the room to a tune that my own shadow sang.

But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go--so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they enjoy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.

What I don't write is as important as what I write.

One's obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one.