One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.

I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.

In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other.

I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.

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.

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