I think a woman is powerless if she cannot freely claim the right to her reproductive capacity. Society can talk about anything it likes, except a woman's reproductive existence.

Sometimes when someone says something stupid, my friends and I just read the reviews out loud and collapse with laughter at the stupidity of it all.

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.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.

"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.

The photograph of my brother that is in this album shows a young man, beautiful and perfect in the way of young people, for young people are always perfect and beautiful until they are not, until the moment they just are not.

I'm sometimes afraid I'll cross a line and it'll be difficult to come back, say, to dinner.