But you know, where did the Brontes go to college? Where did George Eliot go to college? Where did Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington go? Did George Washington go to college? This idea which we now have that people ought to have these credentials is really ridiculous. Where did Homer go to college?

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

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.

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!

"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 inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

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.