The thing to remember about the Declaration of Independence and the profession of freedom is that it was written by people who were quite free and who were surrounded by people who were not free. The people who wrote the Declaration of Independence were ventriloquists really. The obsession with freedom makes no sense when it applies to them.

I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.

Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.

I've come to see that I'm saying something that people generally do not want to hear.

The shadow of my mother danced around the room to a tune that my own shadow sang.

That the world I was in could be soft, lovely, and nourishing was more than I could bear, and so I stood there and wept, for I didn't want to love one more thing in my life, didn't want one more thing that could make my heart break into a million little pieces at my feet.

I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.