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 come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.

I wouldn't mind being labeled as "angry," if it wasn't used once again to denigrate and belittle.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

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

I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.

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