I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

I've never gotten used to winter and never will.

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.

Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry." If I write about a married person who lives in Vermont, it becomes "Oh, she's autobiographical."

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

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.

Who you are is a mystery no one can answer, not even you.