The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.

Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.