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.

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."

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.

Like father like son, like mother like daughter!

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

I wish that I could love someone so much that I would die from it.