You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... That was like ignoring cancer.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.

I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

Nothing. It just finds you a lot more attractive than it does most Humans. What can you do with a beautiful woman that you can’t do with an ugly one? Nothing. It’s just a matter of preference.

I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black,...an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.