There were people whom I considered friends or loved ones who either abandoned me or betrayed me in ways I'd never have suspected. But there were others who had been barely acquaintances of mine whose loyalty and efforts on my behalf made me realize that not everyone was as inherently rotten as I'd previously believed. So it caused a violent split in my view of humanity - people turned out to be far worse and far better than I'd ever dreamed possible.

It's not exactly courageous to be an anti-racist these days; a hundred years ago, it was.

My hatred is diamond-hard.

I think my sense of humor is Jewish. I'm smarter than most white people, which is kind of a Jewish thing, too.

Homosexuality is genetically hardwired but race and gender are only ideas. OK. Just trying to keep up.

More than most, I believe I'm highly attuned to how heresies eventually become mainstream belief systems and how the vast majority of people who consider themselves 'edgy' are those who only embraced radical ideas LONG after it became safe for them to do so.

In my long, long years toiling around the publishing industry, I've found that women simply don't stick to the writing with the same fervor that men do.