My mother loved my father. From my view, she let him get away with too much. It broke my heart to see him in an old people's home and stop being strong and lose his voice.

I really dislike when people talk about "experimental," because any good writer is experimental. As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well. I've been experimenting with these things myself in my own books.

There are still horrible things that go on because of the myth of race, but we don't have to succumb totally.

My mother loved my father. From my view, she let him get away with too much. It broke my heart to see him in an old people's home and stop being strong and lose his voice.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.

Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.