I can't tell you how many times people - through the anonymity and safety of the Internet, of course - have told me 'You beat women' as if it was an ongoing, daily thing. The only person ever brave enough to say it to my face quickly surrendered his courage when I said, 'Would you like to step outside and see if I can beat men, too?'

The average human's fundamental project is to find someone else to blame for their problems.

I certainly didn't emerge from prison regretting anything I ever wrote, nor did I feel remorse for my crime in the least.

Unlike the vast majority of people, I've been locked in a box like an animal and I've also been on the receiving end of bloody thrashings, so I feel uniquely qualified to judge which is worse.

I could have completely lost my mind or became a junkie or abandoned all sense and judgment and committed some rash, stupid act that would have sent me right back into the cage. Instead, I chose to be happy - but not so much for the sake of happiness as for spite.

If anything, I've probably tended more toward humor in my writing and veered more toward pleasure in my personal life.

I don't think it's entirely paranoid to suspect that one day, you won't be able to so much as question the primary tenets of anti-racism without going to jail.