Like father like son, like mother like daughter!

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

When once I got to America I fell in love with hippie culture, and I've always wanted to live in the country and grow organic vegetables.

I would never never read a work of fiction and want to know about the person's life.

A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.