The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession.

The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.

Tomorrow exists even though I may not exist in it.

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 let the criticism deter me.

A piece of cloth that is called "linen" has more validity than calling you and me "black" or "negro." "Cotton" has more validity as cotton than yours and my being "black."

The families of rabbits or woodchucks will eat the salad greens just before they are ready to be picked; I plot ways to kill these animals but can never bring myself to do it.