I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.

Anger... it's a paralyzing emotion... you can't get anything done.

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

...the change was adjustment without improvement.