But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.

My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world's resources.

Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

I dream a dream that dreams back at me.

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.