So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

Teasing out the way the world might look through another's eyes is what makes the creative process so fascinating and enjoyable.

In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them.

I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.

We do not credit to the ideal of religious freedom when we talk as though religious belief is something of which public-spirited adults should be ashamed.

Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.

If people believe that they are marrying out of love and free choice rather than out of duty, they are more likely to decide, if love should die, that the free choice to join together is no more significant than the free choice to part, and to look for love elsewhere; those married out of duty expect less love to begin with, and what duty has brought together, duty may keep together.