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

I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't now, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.

I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along minding his business. It was confusing. I did not know if it was desirable or undesirable.

Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.

We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.