when people say you're charming you are in deep trouble.

The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not.

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

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.

Of course, every time I end a book, I look down at myself and I'm just the same. I'm always disappointed that I'm just the same, but not enough to never do it again!

I like cooking, but I think someone else ought to do the dishes.