A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.

the first step in claiming yourself is anger. You get mad. And you can't do anything before you get angry. And I recommend getting very angry to everyone, anyone.

The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.

America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self.

I'll read anything. In fact, I'll read while I'm doing other things, which is not a good idea.

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

I was then at the height of my two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another; outside false, inside true.