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.

The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes.

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

Compared to men writers of like distinction and years of life, few women writers have had lives of unbroken productivity, or leave behind a 'body of work.' Early beginnings, then silence; or clogged late ones (foreground silences); long periods between books (hidden silences); characterize most of us.

It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched.

I know that I haven’t powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates.

Not everybody feels religion the same way. Some it's in their mouth, but some it's like a hope in their blood, their bones.