The strange thing about my life is that I came to America at about the time when racial attitudes were changing. This was a big help to me. Also, the people who were most cruel to me when I first came to America were black Americans. They made absolute fun of the way I talked, the way I dressed. I couldn't dance. The people who were most kind and loving to me were white people. So what can one make of that? Perhaps it was a coincidence that all the people who found me strange were black and all the people who didn't were white.

It's too easy to say this or that is "race," and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world.

Life has a truth to it, and it's complicated - it's love and it's hatred.

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

I like to be in my pajamas all day. Sometimes I don't wash for days because I like to read and sit around. I like to eat in bed.

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

A tourist is an ugly human being.