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.

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.

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

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

I am a stranger to half measures.

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.

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