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.

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I walk around and walk around. Apparently people often see me standing there and they wave to me and I don't see them because I am reading the landscape.

On their way to freedom, some people find riches, some people find death.

What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.

He must have smiled at me, though I don't really know, but I don't like to think that I would love someone who hadn't first smiled at me.

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