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.

Every time I end a book, I look down at myself.

The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

Here I am, a product of something really vicious, product of the Atlantic slave trade. And yet, I give nary a thought to some of the awful things happening right now in the world.

A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.

It's not that I'm a very good person. It's that I think I should at least look at the ways in which I am not a good person, the ways in which I so readily become the person who would not notice that the wonderful clothing I'm wearing someone is probably dying for.