And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?

It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil.

The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.

I very much dislike the word "race," and I never use it. I use the word "racist." Race is not a fact. There is only one race: human. Skin color is less than 2 percent of the DNA.

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?

The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years - responses to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters - stay with you, mark you, become you. The cost of discontinuity (that pattern still imposed on women) is such a weight of things unsaid, an accumulation of material so great, that everything starts up something else in me; what should take weeks take me sometimes months to write; what should take months, takes years.

More than in any other human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, and responsible