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

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

I'm not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That's how you make the new -- by putting something else with what you've got. And I'm unashamedly an American integrationist.

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

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.

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled 'file and forget.'