Find something you like, go into a room, close the door and read it aloud. Read it aloud. Everybody in the world who likes dance can see dance, or hear music, or see art, or admire architecture - but everybody in the world uses words who is not a recluse or mute. But the writer has to take these most common things, more common than musical notes or dance positions, a writer has to take some adverbs, and verbs and nouns and ball them up together and make them bounce.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.

When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound.

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.

I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.