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.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

The families of rabbits or woodchucks will eat the salad greens just before they are ready to be picked; I plot ways to kill these animals but can never bring myself to do it.

What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.

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.

America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self.

I love planting. I love digging holes, putting plants in, tapping them in. And I love weeding, but I don't like tidying up the garden afterwards.