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.

Love is going to replace life and from then on it's all smooth sailing. Love will replace life.

Ironically, white America will catapult books about race to the top of the best-seller list, even as racism remains a national open wound. Obsession ain't solution, however, because reading even at its most intense and verisimilitudinous is vicarious, and once you close the book you're off the hook.

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