A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

Women manage, quite brilliantly, on the whole, and to stunning and unforeseeable effect, to survive and surmount being defined by others. They dismiss the definition, however dangerous or wounding it may be-- or even, sometimes, find a way to utilize it.

All of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee.

If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.

To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.

People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.