Racism is a virus. And since nobody's really looking too hard for a cure it reproduces itself over and over again.

Novelists have to love humanity to write anything worthwhile. Poets have to love themselves.

To my father, who told me the stories that matter. To my mother, who taught me to remember them.

I quickly learned that motherhood was a high wire act sometimes performed without a net.

Imagination bound us stronger than love. Within its limitless borders we launched ships and love affairs, discovered lost worlds, made buildings and babies, found husbands, wrote letters and Broadway plays. We made ourselves up everyday.

I am a stranger to half measures. With life I am on the attack, restlessly ferreting out each pleasure, foraging for answers, wringing from it even the pain. I ransack life, hunt it down. I am the hungry peasants storming the palace gates. I will have my share. No matter how it tastes.

It was important, I know, for my father as a product of his times not to be vulnerable, so he chose, and I can't say that I blame him, to live his life rather than create it.