Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.

I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.

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.

I know that the fantastic amount of profit that people want to make on anything is damaging. And that none of us seem able to resist it.

I'm always surprised to hear or read my work described, "In angry tones, she says." No! In truthful tones! Does truth have a tone? I don't know.

It's very funny, American society: White culture can do all sorts of things and get away with it, but the minute a black person does it, it's interpreted in some way.

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.