I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

Souls! When have you seen your own soul - that you're so certain you have one?

You are horror and beauty in rare combination.

In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.

People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.

A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't.

I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles -- a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.