A psychiatrist once asked me to draw a picture of my family. This is when I was a member of a family of four. I drew the three other people in the family first, bodies and heads. And then, last, I began to draw myself - but gave up.

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 can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance.

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.

"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.

I would pretend when I was a child that I was Charlotte Brontë, because I'd read Jane Eyre when I was ten and, although I didn't understand it, I loved the idea that this woman had written a book. I wanted to be her.

Love and hatred don't take turns; they exist side by side at the same time. And one's duty, one's obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one.