It's too easy to say this or that is "race," and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world.

I would pretend when I was a child that I was Charlotte Brontë, because I'd read Jane Eyre when I was ten and, although I didn't understand it, I loved the idea that this woman had written a book. I wanted to be her.

The thing we call romance is a diversion from something truer, which is life.

The Holocaust happened in Europe, and that's important to how it is viewed. Had Europeans done such a thing in the far corners of the earth, rather than on their own doorstep, it might not be mentioned in the history books.

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

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

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.