So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare?

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.