I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.

Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.

What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.

America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self.

I like cooking, but I think someone else ought to do the dishes.

Why is a picture of something real eventually more exciting than the thing itself?

One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.