I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.

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'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.

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 come from the small island of Antigua and I always wanted to write; I just didn't know that it was possible.

An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you.

What frustrates me is to see African-Americans behave as though what European-Americans say is worthwhile. It simply isn't. It's just some silly people who can make laws and have the power to enforce them. I'm often amazed at the conversations black people have about themselves. They ought to be having these conversations about white people. It's white people who are flawed and at fault.