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

A piece of cloth that is called "linen" has more validity than calling you and me "black" or "negro." "Cotton" has more validity as cotton than yours and my being "black."

Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this.

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

There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.

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.

I've never let the criticism deter me.