It's not that I'm a very good person. It's that I think I should at least look at the ways in which I am not a good person, the ways in which I so readily become the person who would not notice that the wonderful clothing I'm wearing someone is probably dying for.

What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not.

That the world I was in could be soft, lovely, and nourishing was more than I could bear, and so I stood there and wept, for I didn't want to love one more thing in my life, didn't want one more thing that could make my heart break into a million little pieces at my feet.

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.

The African-American is often used, and has conspired with the rest of America to be used, as a diversion from America's problems. I wish African-Americans would stop contributing to this sideshow. I also wish all African-Americans would cease to sing and dance just for a generation. I think we provide too much entertainment.

I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.