There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.

The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.

I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor.

Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.

An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.

The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.

Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.