I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.

They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations.

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.

When they fall in love with a city, it is for forever and it is like forever.

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.

Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.