When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.

I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.

Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.

I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned.

It's too easy to say this or that is "race," and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world.

I don't feel I'm angry. I feel as though I'm describing something true. If I had stabbed my husband, I could understand being called "angry." If I had an affair with my husband's best friend and written about that experience, I could see the anger. But I'm not doing that.