This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.

She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.

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.

Know that in this world there's somebody who will always love you.

I think that if you're writing about the human condition, my God, you've got to start at base: point zero, point one, is the body.

...one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away.

I was surrounded by a lot of male writers of color who have this incredibly bizarre relationship to masculinity. It's like we were all mega-nerds but you would never know that if you listened to the way they talk about themselves.