Children like their mothers especially to be standing still and watching them, even if they are sleeping. At least that's how I felt. There's nothing wrong with the self-interest of children; it's just the way they are.

I wish that I could love someone so much that I would die from it.

In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

I'm always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something.

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.