I think that most of us are aware that as writers we are seeking absences, we're seeking silences, we're seeking spaces that people haven't entered. No writer is saying, "Hey, I want to go to this very well trod territory and say exactly what someone else has done." I think the nature of a writer, because we are attempting to bring to light areas that people haven't seen before, tends in some ways to be progressive, at least in that light.

When you're the ones in the life raft and you have four or five women in the life raft who put it together, by the end of it your nerves are blown. The people you're going to attack are the people who are helping you, who you are holding it together with.

I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.

I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.

Part of it is eight years of a black president, and white America still lost their [minds] about that. Part of it is a Republican politics of vicious, vicious partisan [stuff] that has completely poisoned what we would call the political rhetorical sphere. All of these things come together in a perfect storm.

Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.

I think what happened to me was that I was always being taught to look, but one day I started to see. And it was because a lot of women in my life were refusing just to be looked at, to be this passive figure.