Do not judge. Never presume to judge another human being anyway. That's up to heaven.

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

The dead are the only people to have permanent dwellings.

[A pariah is] something like a martyr with more suffering and less class.

Language is decanted and shared. If only one person is left alive speaking a language - the case with some American Indian languages - the language is dead. Language takes two and their multiples.

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.

Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.