Every day you're alive and someone loves you is a miracle.

In art as in politics we must deal with people as they are not as we wish them to be. Only by working with the real can you get closer to the ideal.

Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

No one remembers her beginnings. Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won't forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we'll include them in our future.

all outcast peoples struggle to be recognized as individuals. The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality. You're just a faggot. Or whatever - fill in the blank. Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people.

Show me a writer, any writer, who hasn't suffered and I'll show you someone who writes in pastels as opposed to primary colors.

Education is a wonderful thing. If you couldn't sign your name you'd have to pay cash.