The consciousness of one's physical self had to be repressed because, socially, the female body was so visible, an ongoing provocation and incitement of specular curiosity and fascination.

In the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself.

It's as if I'm setting aside the husband and son, you know, the patriarchal world, for the world of the muse. This is the world of writing.

If I could write a novel while I'm walking, I probably would.

When people say "the body," frequently they mean the literal body, the physical body.

According to [Maxine Hong] Kingston, the prose writer is "a workhorse."

You've read some of the poems in this new unpublished book [Walker's Alphabet], e.g., the poem "C." I have a number of poems whose titles are letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F.