There's a difference between bravery and rash stupidity.

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry." If I write about a married person who lives in Vermont, it becomes "Oh, she's autobiographical."

I would pretend when I was a child that I was Charlotte Brontë, because I'd read Jane Eyre when I was ten and, although I didn't understand it, I loved the idea that this woman had written a book. I wanted to be her.

What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.

The Holocaust happened in Europe, and that's important to how it is viewed. Had Europeans done such a thing in the far corners of the earth, rather than on their own doorstep, it might not be mentioned in the history books.